



\\,4 






jV . • • 












>.'u. 



'^^'^4V3^^ 



,<^ 



^*.. 

























V^' 













\,^^ :'^^^- ^.Z :^'v %.^" ''-^^^ 



1^ «• »>» ."^ 



<Jy' 




CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 

THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED 

Edited by GEORGE M. WRONG and H. H. LANGTON 



CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 



Part I 

THE FIRST 

EUROPEAN 

VISITORS 



Part II 

THE RISE 

OF NEW 

FRANCE 



Part III 

THE 
ENGLISH 
INVASION 



1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY 
By Stephen Leacock. 

2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO 
By Stephen Leacock. 

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE* 
By Charles V^. Colby. 

4. THE BLACKROBES* 
By J. Edgar Middleton. 

5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA 
By V/. Bennett Munro. 

6. THE GREAT INTENDANT 
By Thomas Chapais. 

7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR*^ 
By Charles V7. Colby. 

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS * 
By V^illiain Wood. 

9. THE ACADIAN EXILES ' 
By Arthur G. Doughty. 

10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE 
By William Wood. 

11. THE WINNING OF CANADA 
By William Wood. 

The volumcn marked with an asterisk are in preparation. 
The others are published. 



CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 



12. THE INVASION OF 1775 * 

By C. Frederick Hamilton. 

13. BATTLEFIELDS OF 1812-14 * 

By William V7ood. 

14. PONTIAC: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE 

OTTAWAS * 

By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 

15. BRANT: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX 

NATIONS 

By Louis Aubrey Wood. 

16. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER 

OF HIS PEOPLE* 

By Ethel T. Raymond. 

[7. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' 
ON HUDSON BAY 

By Agnes C. Laut. 

t8. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT 
PLAINS 

By Lawrence J. Burpee. 

:9. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST* 
By Agnes C. Laut. 

50. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH 
By Stephen Leacock. 

la. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS 

! By W. Stewart Wallace. 

1 

!a. THE RED RIVER COLONY* 

By Louis Aubrey Wood. 

3. THE CARIBOO TRAIL * 

By Agnes C. Laut. 



Part IV 

THE 
AMERICAN 
INVASIONS 



PART V 

THE 

RED MAN 

IN CANADA 



PART VI 
PATH- 
FINDERS 

AND 
PIONEERS 



CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 



Part vii 

POLITICAL 

FREEDOM 

AND 

NATIONALITY 



24. THE 'FAMILY COMPACT '^ 

By W. Stewart Wallace. 

25. THE REBELLION IN LOWER 

CANADA * 

By A. D. DeCelles. 

26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA* 

By William L. Grant 

27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR 

GOVERNMENT' 

By Archibald MacMechaa 

23. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERA- 
TION * 

By Sir Joseph Pope. 

29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD^ 

By Sir Joseph Pope. 

30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER • 

By Oscar D. Skelton. 



PART VIII 
NATIONAL 
HIGHWAYS 



31. ALL AFLOAT 



By William Wood. 



32. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS* 

By Oscar D. Skelton. 



TORONTO : GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 



THE WAR CHIEF 
OF THE SIX NATIONS 

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD 




Kniinthc pnintiiiK l\v (it.. Ti^t !>:< '111111 



THE WAR CHIEF 
OF THE SIX NATIONS 

A Chronicle of Joseph Brant 

BY 

LOUIS AUBREY WOOD 




TORONTO 

GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 

1914 



Copyright in all Countries subscribing to 
the Berne Convention 



CONTENTS 



I. THE YOUNG MOHAWK 
II. BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 

III. SCHOOLDAYS AND AFTER . 

IV. THE WAYS DIVIDE . 
V. ACROSS THE SEA 

VI. BRANT MEETS HERKIMER 
VII. FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 
VIII. FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 
IX. CHERRY VALLEY 
X. MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG 
XI. OVER THE BORDER . 
XII. ENGLAND ONCE MORE 

XIII. STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 

XIV. THE CHURCH BELL RINGS 
XV. THE PINE-TREE TOTTERS . 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . 
INDEX .... 



RIVER 



Page 

I 

9 

20 

28 
38 

45 
54 
64 
75 
84 
95 
106 

1x5 
126 

133 
141 
143 



ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



JOSEPH BRANT 

From the painting by George Romney. 

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON 

From a contemporary engraving-. 

THE COUNTRY OF BRANT'S OPERATIONS . 
Map by Bartholomew. 

KING HENDRICK 

From a portrait in possession of the Chicago 
Historical Society. 

A VIEW OF FORT NIAGARA 
Drawn on the spot in 1758. 

COLONEL GUY JOHNSON .... 
From the John Ross Robertson Collection in the 
Toronto Public Library. 

JOSEPH BRANT 

From a portrait in the Indian Department, Wash- 
ington, D.C. 

RED JACKET 

After a painting by R. W. Weir. 

THE OLD MOHAWK CHURCH, BRANTFORD 
Photograph by Park. 



. Frontispiece 



Facing page 6 



zo 



14 



18 



30 



80 



96 



I2S 



xi 



1/ 

\ 



CHAPTER I 

THE YOUNG MOHAWK 



A GROUP of huntsmen were camping on the 
Ohio river. The foliage swayed in the night 
wind, and the argent light of the moon ran in 
fleeting bars through the dim recesses of the 
forest. From the ground arose a ruddier 
glare. High and dry, fires had been built 
and the flames were darting and curvetting 
among the trees. In the weird light the 
hunters were clustered about in squads, silently 
stripping their prey or preparing their weapons 
for the morrow's chase. In the background 
were the women, moving here and there in the 
dancing shadows. One was bending low over 
a newborn infant, and as she uttered his name 
in the stillness of the evening it blended with 
the music of the tree-tops. 

* Thayendanegea ! ' ^ 

The name was taken from the great book of 
nature. It was a birth-name of the Mohawks 

^ Pronounced Tai-yen-da-nay-geh. 
A 



2 THE WAR CHIEF 

meaning two sticks of wood bound together, a 
sign of strength ; and the woman hoped that 
her tiny child might one day be a man of valour 
among the Mohawks. Could she have but 
known it, her desire was to be more than 
realized, for in vigour of mind and body he was 
destined to surpass all the offspring of his race. 

So it was, in the year 1 742, in the reign of King 
George the Second, that Thayendanegea was 
born among the Mohawks on the banks of the 
Ohio. To the untaught savage this sluggish 
stream was a thing of life, and he called it the 
* River Beautiful.' The Ohio valley was at this 
time the favourite hunting-ground of the Indian 
peoples. Because this valley was rich in game 
and comfortable to dwell in, it had been a scene 
of bitter strife. The problem of rule on the 
Ohio was of long standing. For a whole 
century Delaware and Shawnee and Wyandot 
andSix Nations contendedforthe territory; tribe 
was pitted against tribe, and then at last the 
answer was given. The Iroquois confederacy, 
or Six Nations/ whose villages lay by the 
Hudson river, united, determined, and venge- 
ful, had gained the ascendancy ; from the banks 

' Mohawks, Cayug:as, Senecas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and 
Tuscaxoras. 



THE YOUNG MOHAWK 3 

of the Hudson to the seats of the stranger beside 
Lake Erie the lands belonged to them; and 
other tribes to the east and west and north and 
south paid them tribute. The Mohawks were 
the mightiest of the Six Nations ; in the con- 
federacy they were chief in council ; from their 
ranks was chosen the head war chief, who 
commanded on the field of battle ; they took 
the first-fruits of the chase, and were leaders in 
everything. 

Some time was to pass, however, before 
Thayendanegea could understand that he was 
sprung from a race of conquerors. As yet 
he was but a simple Indian babe, v/ith staring 
brown eyes and raven-black hair. Of the 
mother who cared for him history has prac- 
tically nothing to say. She may have been 
a Mohawk, but this is by no means certain. It 
has even been hinted that she came from the 
Western Indians, and was a damsel of the 
Shawnee race who had left the wigwams of her 
people. At all events we may be sure that she 
had the natural instincts and impulses of a 
forest mother ; that she knew where the linden 
grew high and where the brown-red sycamores 
clustered thick by the margin of the stream. 
It may be supposed that when the sun mounted 
high she would tie the picturesque, richly 



4 THE WAR CHIEF 

ornamented baby-frame containing her boy to 
some drooping branch to swing from its 
leathern thong in the cooHng breeze. We 
may imagine her tuneful voice singing the 
mother's Wa Wa song, the soft lullaby 
of the sylvan glades. Thayendanegea's eyes 
blink and tremble ; he forgets the floating 
canopy above him and sleeps in his forest 
cradle. 

The hunting excursion to the Ohio came at 
length to an end, and then the Mohawks 
started for their lodges in the far north-east. 
Up the broad river sped the strongest canoe- 
men of all the peoples of the forest, with 
Thayendanegea stowed snugly in the bottom 
of some slender craft. Over the long and 
weary portages trudged his mother, her child 
bound loosely on her shoulders. Their route 
lay towards Lake Erie, then along the well- 
trodden trail to the Mohawk river; and the 
baby was for the first time among the fertile 
cornfields and the strange Long Houses of his 
people. At this period the Mohawks lived 
farthest east of all the tribes of the Six Nations. 
Their main settlements were along the Mohawk 
river in what is now the state of New York, but { 
they claimed authority over the region stretch- 
ing thence towards Montreal. They had three 



THE YOUNG MOHAWK S 

settlements on the Mohawk, the central one 
of which, called Canajoharie Castle, was the 
home of Thayendanegea's parents. Near 
by lived the celebrated William Johnson, His 
Majesty's representative for Indian Affairs in 
the colony of New York, who some years later 
became sole superintendent of * the six united 
nations, their allies and dependents.' 

When Thayendanegea grew stronger he 
began to romp with the other boys of the 
village. With them he followed the women 
down to the river's brink, picking up shiny 
pebbles from the sand, or watching the min- 
nows dart about in the sunlight. With 
them, when the days were long, he crawled 
through the brambles, looking for luscious 
berries, or ran with the wiry Indian dogs into 
copse and brushwood. Then he learned to 
swim, to fish, and to dip his paddle noise- 
lessly in the stream. Like every red child, 
Thayendanegea listened rapt in wonder to 
the tales that were told him. The Mohawks 
had a storehouse of fable, and he soon became 
versed in the lore of the forest. Perhaps, too, 
he sat beside his wrinkled grandfather, who 
was a sachem,^ or petty king, of the Six 

^ That Thayendanegea was the grandchild of one of these 
sachems who were so honoured appears from information given 



6 THE WAR CHIEF 

Nations, and heard the old man tell the 
romantic story of his trip to England in the 
year 1710, when Anne was sovereign queen; 
heard how five sachems at this time had gone 
on an embassy for their people and were 
right royally entertained in the city of London ; 
how, as they passed through the streets, the 
little children flocked behind, marvelling at 
their odd appearance ; how at the palace they 
appeared in garments of black and scarlet and 
gold and were gladly received by the queen, 
whom they promised to defend against her 
foes ; and how, after seeing the soldiers march, 
and after riding in the queen's barge and en- 
joying various amusements, they returned to 
their own country. 

There is some obscurity surrounding the 
identity of Thayendanegea's father, but it is 
generally agreed that he was a full-blooded 
Mohawk and a chief of the Wolf clan.^ By 
some writers it is said that he bore the English 
name of Nickus Brant. Others say that 
Thayendanegea's father died while the son 

in an article published in the London Magazine of July 1776. The 
material for this account of him is supposed to have been supplied 
by the famous author James Boswell, with whom, while on a 
visit to England in that year, he was intimate. 

' The Mohawks were divided into three clans— the Tortoise, 
the Bear, and the Wolf. 




SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON 
From a contemporary cni,n-aving 



THE YOUNG MOHAWK 7 

was still an infant and that the mother then 
married an Indian known to the English as 
Brant. By and by, as Thayendanegea mingled 
with the English, he acquired the name of 
Joseph, and so came down through history 
as Joseph Brant ; but whether he acquired 
this name from his father or from his step- 
father we cannot tell, and it does not really 
matter. We shall know him hereafter by his 
English name. 

In the traditions of the Mohawk valley it is 
told how one day a regimental muster was being 
held, in Tryon county, in the colony of New 
York, at which William Johnson was present. 
Among the throng of those who were out to 
see the sights was Molly Brant, Joseph^s elder 
sister, a lively, winsome girl of sixteen years. 
During the manoeuvres a field-officer rode by, 
mounted on a spirited steed. As he passed, 
Molly asked if she might get up behind. The 
officer, thinking it a bit of banter, said she 
might. In an instant she had sprung upon 
the crupper. Away went the steed, flying 
about the field. Molly clung tight to the 
officer, her blanket flapping in the breeze 
and her dark hair floating wide. Every one 
burst into merriment, and no one enjoyed the 
spectacle more than Colonel William Johnson 



8 THE WAR CHIEF 

himself. A flame of love for Molly was 
kindled in his heart, and, being a widower, he 
took her home and made her his bride after 
the Indian fashion. It would seem quite 
natural, then, that the superintendent should 
be interested in the career of Molly's brother 
Joseph. Born, as the young redskin was, of 
princely stock, he might, with such an advan- 
tage, be expected to attain to honour and dignity 
among the people of the Long House. There 
was, however, one obstacle ; although Joseph's 
father was a chief, he did not inherit rank, for 
it was the custom of the Six Nations to trace 
descent through the blood of the mother, and 
his mother, who had brought him over hill 
and water from the banks of the Ohio, was of 
humble origin. If Joseph wished, therefore, 
to rise among his fellows, he must hew out his 
own path to greatness. By pluck and wisdom 
alone could he win a lasting place in the hearts 
of his people. As we tell his story, we shall see 
how he gathered strength and became a man 
of might and of valour. 



CHAPTER II 

BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 

No one delighted more in the free and easy life 
of the frontier than did Colonel William 
Johnson. He was a typical colonial patroon, 
a representative of the king and a friend of the 
red man. The Indians trusted him implicitly. 
He had studied their character and knew well 
their language. He entered into their life 
with full sympathy for their traditions and was 
said to possess an influence over them such as 
had never been gained by any other white 
man. For a long time he lived at Fort Johnson, 
a three-storey dwelling of stone on the left 
bank of the Mohawk, and later at Johnson 
Hall, a more spacious mansion several miles 
farther north. Here all who came were 
treated with a lavish hand, and the wayfarer 
found a welcome as he stopped to admire the 
flowers which grew before the portals. Within 
were a retinue of servants, careful for the needs 
of all. When hearts were sad or time went 



10 THE WAR CHIEF 

slowly, a dwarf belonging to the household 
played a merry tune on his violin to drive away 
gloom from the wilderness mansion. 

On one occasion, however, Johnson's 
hospitality was taxed beyond all bounds. 
This was at Fort Johnson in the year 1755, 
just after he had been made a major-general 
in the colonial militia. The French from 
Canada had already been making bold en- 
croachments on territory claimed by the 
English to the north and the west. They had 
erected Fort Duquesne at the junction of the 
Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, where the 
great city of Pittsburgh now stands ; they had 
fortified Niagara ; and now they were bidding 
defiance to all the English colonists between 
the Alleghany Mountains and the sea. War 
had not been declared in Europe, but the 
inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies, only too 
eager to stay the hand of France in America, 
planned a series of blows against the enemy. 
Among other things, they decided that an 
attempt should be made to capture the French 
stronghold of Fort Frederic at Crown Point 
on Lake Champlain. The officer selected to 
command the expedition to be sent on this 
enterprise was William Johnson, now a 
major-general of the colony of New York. 




Missing Pages 



These missing pages will be inserted at a future ( 




sing Pages 



)age5 will be inserted at a future date, 



BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE ii 

It flashed at once across Johnson's mind 
that his redskin friends could aid him in the 
undertaking ; so he sent messages with all 
speed to the tribes, asking them to gather 
at his house. Eleven hundred hungry Indians 
answered the summons. From all quarters 
they came in, taking up their residence for the 
time being upon his broad domain. Johnson's 
bright and genial face clouded as he looked 
upon the multitude of guests and saw his food 
supplies vanishing and every green thing that 
grew upon his fields and meadows being 
plucked up. But he bore it all good-naturedly, 
for he was determined to win their support. 
Seated on the grass in squads, according to 
their tribes, they listened while he addressed 
them and told them of their duties to the 
English crown. With rising eloquence he 
said that they were bound in their allegiance 
to the English as though with a silver chain. 
* The ends of this silver chain,' he added, * are 
fixed in the immovable mountains, in so firm a 
manner that the hands of no mortal enemy 
might be able to move it.* Then as he bade 
them take the field, he held a war belt in his 
hands and exclaimed with fervour : 

* My war kettle is on the fire ; my canoe is 
ready to put into the water ; my gun is loaded ; 



12 THE WAR CHIEF 

my sword is by my side ; and my axe is 
sharpened.' 

Little Abraham, sachem of the lower Mohawk 
valley, took the belt from him. Red Head, 
a chief of the Onondagas, made reply, telling 
him that from every castle warriors would 
follow him to the north. A war dance 
followed, and a large body of the Six Nations 
were ready for the fray. 

No doubt young Joseph Brant was in this 
great audience, listening to the speeches of 
his elders. He was only thirteen years of age 
at the time, but the spirit of the war-path was 
already upon him. The zealous appeals of 
the major-general must have stirred him 
greatly, and it may well be that this lad, with 
youthful frame and boyish features, here re- 
ceived an impulse which often sustained him 
in later years during his long career of active 
loyalty on behalf of the English cause. As it 
happened, Joseph was soon to be in active 
service. On August 8, 1755, Johnson's ex- 
pedition left Albany, and a week later arrived 
at the great carrying-place between the Hudson 
and Lac St Sacrement, as Lake George was then 
called. At this point Fort Lyman ^ had been 
built the same summer. Thence the major- 

^ Afterwards named Fort Edward. 



BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 13 

general set out, with fifteen hundred pro- 
vincials and three hundred Indians, on his 
journey northward. King Hendrick, a chief 
of the Mohawks, led the tribesmen, and under 
his direction a number of braves were being 
tested for the first time. One of these — we may 
imagine the boy's intense delight — was young 
Joseph Brant. 

On reaching Lac St Sacrement Johnson made 
a halt and took up a strong position on the 
shore. Soon reinforcements arrived under 
General Phineas Lyman, his second in com- 
mand. Johnson re-named the lake. * I have 
given it,' he says, * the name of Lake George, 
not only in honour of His Majesty, but to assert 
his undoubted dominion here.' 

Meanwhile Baron Dieskau, the commander 
of the French forces, having landed at South 
Bay, the southern extremity of the waters of 
Lake Champlain, was moving down through 
the woods. His army was made up of a 
large body of French Canadians, Indians, 
and regular soldiers of the regiments of La 
Reine and Languedoc. He marched by way 
of Wood Creek, and was bent on making 
a vigorous attack on Fort Lyman. But when 
he arrived at a point about midway between 
Fort Lyman and Johnson's camp on Lake 



14 THE WAR CHIEF 

George, his Indians became unruly, declar- 
ing that they would march no farther south 
nor venture off the soil that belonged to 
France. There was nothing for Dieskau to 
do but to change his plans. Swerving in a 
north-westerly direction, he struck the new 
road that Johnson had made to the lake. 
This he followed, intending to fall upon the 
English forces wherever he should find them. 

Johnson's scouts, prowling to the southward, 
detected this move. Back to the encam.p- 
ment they brought the news of Dieskau's 
approach and the English leader at once made 
ready to defend his position. Trees were 
felled ; the wagons and bateaux were brought 
up ; a strong breastwork was built across the 
new-cut roadway ; cannon were put in position 
to play upon the advancing enemy. Then dis- 
cussion took place as to the advisability of 
making a sortie against the foe. It was sug- 
gested that five hundred men would be sufficient, 
but at the mention of this number King Hen- 
drick, the Indian leader, interposed. What, 
indeed, could such a paltry handful do in the 
face of the oncoming Frenchmen ? 

* If they are to fight,' he said, * they are too 
few ; if they are to be killed, they are too 
many.' 




KING HEXDKICK 

From a portrait in possession of the Chicago Historical Society 



BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 15 

In the early morning, September 8, 1755, a 
force of twelve hundred set forth, only to learn 
the wisdom of Hendrick's advice. Dieskau was 
proceeding cautiously, hoping to catch the 
English in a trap. He sent out flying wings of 
Indians andCanadians,whilehisFrenchregulars 
formed the centre of his force. As the English 
advanced along the road, they found them- 
selves suddenly attacked on both sides by the 
enemy. A stiff struggle then took place in 
which Johnson's men were badly worsted. 
King Hendrick's horse was shot down, and 
before he could free himself from his saddle 
he was slain by a bayonet thrust. Retreat now 
became necessary, and by a steady movement 
the English fell back upon their camp. There 
they determined to make a decisive stand. 
Dieskau, emboldened by the success of his 
previous advance, led his troops towards the 
lake in battle array. His progress, however, was 
stopped by the rude barricade which had been 
piled across the road, and by eleven o'clock the 
second engagement of the day was already 
being fought. 

Brant has described his feelings when, as a 
mere boy, he received his baptism of fire upon 
this battle-ground. When the clatter of the 
musketry fell upon his ears, his heart jumped 



i6 THE WAR CHIEF 

and an indescribable fear seemed to take pos- 
session of him. His limbs trembled, and in 
despair he looked for something to steady him 
in the ordeal. Near by grew a slender sapling, 
and he clutched at this and held on tenaciously 
while the bullets went whizzing by. After a 
few volleys had been fired he regained his 
natural poise and took his place beside the old 
fighters who were holding their own against a 
savage attack. From this moment he acquitted 
himself with valour in the battle, and, youth 
though he was, he fulfilled his desire * to support 
the character of a brave man of which he was 
exceedingly ambitious.* 

At length the French troops began to recoil 
before the sweep of the English cannon. Dies- 
kau received a severe wound and the ardour 
of his followers was visibly cooled. At four 
o'clock the English general thought the oppor- 
tune moment had arrived to make a sortie, 
and his men climbed over the rampart and 
drove the French to flight in every direction. 
The wounded Dieskau was made prisoner and 
borne to the camp of his enemy. Johnson's 
leg had been pierced by a bullet, and in this 
condition he was carried to his tent. 

As the two generals lay helpless on their 
litters, several redskins entered the tent and 



BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 17 

scowled upon the recumbent Dieskau. * These 
fellows have been regarding me with a look 
not indicative of much compassion/ said 
the French commander. * Anything else ! ' 
answered Johnson, ' for they wished to oblige 
me to deliver you into their hands in order to 
burn you, in revenge for the death of their 
comrades and of their chiefs who have been 
slain in the battle.' Then he added : * Feel no 
uneasiness ; you are safe with me.' 

This affair at Lake George was only an open- 
ing battle in the Seven Years' War between 
France and England which was waged in three 
continents and closed in America with the fall 
of Montreal in 1760. For his victory over 
Dieskau William Johnson was made a baronet, 
and thus became Sir William Johnson. He 
continued to offer his services until the war 
ended ; and during the memorable campaign 
of 1759, while Wolfe and Amherst were operat- 
ing in the east, he was sent with Brigadier 
Prideaux to effect, if possible, the capture of 
Fort Niagara. The expedition ascended the 
Mohawk in June, crossed over to Oswego, and 
thence followed the south shore of Lake 
Ontario to its destination. The French fort 
stood at the mouth of the Niagara where it 
enters Lake Ontario, and was under the com- 

B 



i8 THE WAR CHIEF 

mand of Captain Pouchot. No sooner had 
this officer heard of the EngHsh approach than 
he sent to Presqu'Ile and other points in the 
west asking that reinforcements should be 
dispatched with all haste for his relief. 

The English investing army consisted of 
twenty-three hundred regulars and provincials, 
together with nine hundred Indians from the 
tribes of the Six Nations. At the very outset 
Prideaux was accidentally killed by the prema- 
ture bursting of a shell from a coehorn and John- 
son had to take command. Acting with vigour 
he prosecuted the siege until July 24, when 
firing in the distance told that help for the 
besieged would soon be at hand. Straightway 
Johnson selected one-third of his men and 
marched to meet the relieving force, which 
was led by Captain D^Aubrey and comprised 
eleven hundred French and several hundred 
redskins from the western tribes. The con- 
flict which ensued was short but desperate. 
The Six Nations, posted on the fianks of the 
English line, fought valiantly, and, largely 
owing to their valour, the French were put to 
rout. On the same day Pouchot capitulated. 
By this success the chain of French forts 
stretching from the St Lawrence to Louisiana 
was snapped near the middle. Although 



■;,:"J 



o I >i \ .1- n; () :•[ M \ 'I 











r ?; 


^ 










£"l '^^ 




<^^^-M 


■ ■ ' , . i 


=^ ri:->' 




"^^.^ 


1; 






-^ ^ z ■- 


^ I • 






"" -v ■-* ^ 




;^ ^ ^' ? 






' 


= ^- ^ 


1 


-^ - - 








_ K - -^ 


- 


;^\ ^ 




<; \ 


' 



:^ 



BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 19 

Brant's deeds have not been recorded, it is 
stated on good authority that he was with 
Sir William Johnson on this occasion and 
that he bore himself with marked distinc- 
tion. 



CHAPTER III 

SCHOOLDAYS AND AFTER 

Through the storm and stress of these cam- 
paigns, the eyes of the Mohawks were upon 
Joseph Brant. They expected much of him, 
and he earnestly tried to fulfil their hopes. 
Still in his teens, he was already a seasoned 
warrior, having * fought with Death and dulled 
his sword.* The Mohawks were pleased. Let 
a few more autumns strew the carpet of the 
forest, and they would have in him a brave 
and robust leader worthy of their tradition. 
Joseph, on the other hand, was dissatisfied. 
He had lived and communed with white men 
and had come to know a greatness that was 
not to be won by following the war-path. He 
had wielded the tomahawk ; he had bivouacked 
among armed men on the field of battle : now 
he was eager for the schoolroom. He wished 
to widen his knowledge and to see the great 
world that lay beyond the rude haunts of the 
red men. 

80 



SCHOOLDAYS AND AFTER 21 

Joseph was in this frame of mind when an 
Indian with the very English name of David 
Fowler came to Fort Johnson. Fowler was 
on a long journey from his home by the sea 
and rode on horseback. He had something to 
relate, he said, that was of significance for 
the Indian people. At Lebanon, in the colony 
of Connecticut, there was an institution for the 
education of any young redskin who might be 
able to come, and he had been sent by Doctor 
Eleazar Wheelock, its principal, to gather 
recruits. Addressing Sir William Johnson, 
he asked him if there were among the Six 
Nations Indians any lads whom he should 
like to send to the school. 

Sir William was not slow to act. Joseph 
Brant, the pride of Canajoharie Castle, thirsting 
for knowledge, must surely go. Two other 
boys, named Negyes and Center, were chosen 
to accompany him. These were * three boys,' 
as Dr Wheelock afterwards wrote, ' who were 
willing to leave their friends and country, and 
come among strangers of another language 
and quite another manner of living, and where, 
perhaps, none of their nation, then living, had 
ever been.' 

The trip to Connecticut was made in 1761, 
and the lads arrived at Lebanon about mid- 



22 THE WAR CHIEF 

summer. They were not at all sure that the 
school would be to their liking and had planned, 
if such should prove to be the case, to make a 
hasty flight back to the Mohawk valley on the 
horses they brought with them. Negyes and 
Center looked rather woebegone as they came 
into Dr Wheelock's presence : * Two of 
them,* he says, * were but little better than 
naked/ Brant, however, created a good im- 
pression. * The other, being of a family of 
distinction, was considerably clothed, Indian 
fashion, and could speak a few words of 
English.' 

The school was kept up by a number of 
benevolent persons who contributed liberally 
to its funds. Sir William Johnson was ready 
to do his share to aid the good work, and some 
four months and a half after the Mohawk boys 
had arrived he wrote to the principal : * I shall 
not be backward to contribute my mite.' A 
house in which to hold the classes and two acres 
of land had been given by a farmer named 
Joshua Moor ; hence the institution was gener- 
ally called Moor's Indian Charity School. The 
principal, Dr Wheelock, was a man of wide 
scholarship, and became later on the founder 
of the seat of learning in New Hampshire now 
known as Dartmouth College. 



SCHOOLDAYS AND AFTER 23 

But little is known of the course of study 
pursued by Joseph at Moor's School. When 
he entered it his knowledge must have been 
very slender, and as a young man he began to 
learn things ordinarily taught to a mere child. 
It is likely that he now became much more 
fluent than formerly in his use of the English 
tongue. From the beginning his progress was 
very rapid, and Dr Wheelock does not stint the 
praise that he bestows upon him : ' Joseph is 
indeed an excellent youth,' was his comment ; 
' he has much endeared himself to me, as well 
as to his master, and everybody also by his good 
behaviour.* 

The master here spoken of was Charles 
Jeffrey Smith, a young man of ample means 
who wished to be of service to the Indians. He 
had come to the school after Joseph's arrival 
and helped the principal in giving instruction. 
He very soon remarked the superior intelligence 
which Joseph showed among the twenty-five 
pupils in his charge. Intending to make a 
missionary tour among the Indian tribes, he 
proposed to take his young pupil with him as an 
interpreter. Writing to Sir William Johnson 
about the matter, he referred to Joseph in 
most glowing terms : * As he is a promising 
youth, of a sprightly genius, singular modesty. 



24 THE WAR CHIEF 

and a serious turn, I know of none so well 
calculated to answer my end as he is/ 

It was with sad misgivings that Joseph 
thought of turning his back upon the school, 
where he had been for scarcely two years ; but 
Smith promised to continue as his teacher when 
they were together in the Indian country, and 
to pay him something for his work as an inter- 
preter. This appealed to the young redskin. 
It appeared that his schooldays were ended in 
any event, for his people were jealous of his 
prolonged stay in the lodges of the stranger 
and he had received a message calling him back 
to Canajoharie Castle. 

In the month of June 1763, master and pupil 
set out together, but, as fate would have it. 
Smith's quest among the tribes was to be 
quickly ended. Hardly had he begun his 
pilgrimage when he found the Indians in wild 
commotion. Again the hatchet had been un- 
buried, and for the sake of security he had to 
bring his mission to an abrupt end. 

Pontiac, great chief of the Ottawas, had 
raised the standard of revolt against English 
rule. This was an aftermath of the struggle 
just concluded with France, and began when 
the Western Indians saw that another race of 
pale-faces had come upon their lands. With 



SCHOOLDAYS AND AFTER 25 

skill and adroitness Pontiac had gathered many 
tribes into a strong offensive league. He 
declared that if they followed in his train he 
would drive the feet of the intruder from the 
red man's territory. There was a savage rising 
in May 1763. In a twinkling eight English 
posts in the interior fell before the savages. 
Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt/ at the head-waters 
of the Ohio, and Fort Detroit in the west, were 
alone left standing of all the places attacked, 
and Detroit was besieged by Pontiac with thirty- 
six chiefs at his back. The call to arms in 
defence was urgent. A portion of the Six 
Nations joined their old allies, the English, and 
among the warriors who went out was Joseph 
Brant. * Joseph tarried,' we are told, * and 
went out with a company against the Indians, 
and was useful in the war, in which he behaved 
so much like the Christian and the soldier, that 
he gained great esteem.* 

A body of Mohawks were among the troops 
which brought succour to Major Gladwyn in 
his resistance at Fort Detroit in 1763, and it 
is possible that Brant was in the thick of the 
fight in this vicinity. It is possible, too, that 
he was with Colonel Bouquet in August at the 
battle of Bushy Run, near Fort Pitt. In this 

^ Formerly Fort Duquesne. 



26 THE WAR CHIEF 

engagement, after two days of strenuous back- 
woods fighting, the Indians were finally 
worsted. Pontiac's star had begun to set. 
With hopeless odds against him, the stubborn 
chief of the Ottawas kept up the struggle until 
the following year, but at last he was com- 
pelled to sue for peace. 

In the meantime Brant's reputation among 
his tribesmen was steadily rising. In the 
spring of 1764, when the fighting was at an 
end, he returned to Canajoharie Castle. There 
he built a comfortable house, wedded the 
daughter of an Oneida chieftain, and dwelt for 
some years in peace and quiet. Two children, 
Isaac and Christiana, were born to him of this, 
his first, marriage. We may pass rapidly over 
these tranquil years of Brant's life. He did 
his domestic duties as a man should ; and Sir 
William Johnson, finding him trustworthy, 
had constant work for him, and sent him on 
many important missions to the Indians, even 
to the far-western tribes. During this period 
Brant became a communicant in the Anglican 
Church, and, knowing well what hardships the 
missionaries had to endure, he gave them what 
help he could in their work among the red 
people. He assisted the Rev. John Stuart, 
a missionary to his tribe and afterwards a 



SCHOOLDAYS AND AFTER 27 

distinguished clergyman in Upper Canada, in 
his translation of the Acts of the Apostles, in 
a History of the Bible, and in a brief explana- 
tion of the Catechism, in the dialect of the 
Mohawks. It is related that a belated mission- 
ary, footsore and weary, crept one day to 
Brant's abode, where he was given food and 
cared for in his sickness. * Joseph Brant,' the 
missionary wrote in grateful tribute, * is 
exceeding kind.' 

It was well that a man of judicious mind and 
fearless heart was coming to the fore among 
the nation of the Mohawks, A cloud had 
begun to fleck the horizon ; soon would come 
the sound of the approaching tempest. How 
would it fare with the Six Nations in the day of 
turmoil ? 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WAYS DIVIDE 

The happy ending, in 1763, of the war with 
France left the EngHsh colonies in America 
with little to disturb them, except the dis- 
contented red men beyond the Alleghany 
Mountains. The colonies grew larger ; they 
did more business and they gathered more 
wealth. But as they prospered they became 
self-confident and with scarce an enemy at 
home they became involved in a quarrel with 
the motherland across the sea. England, they 
said, was taxing them unjustly and posting 
soldiers in their chief cities to carry out her 
will. They were by no means disposed to 
submit. As early as 1770 a mob in Boston 
attacked an English guard and drew upon 
themselves its fire, which caused bloodshed in 
the city's streets. This was the prelude of the 
American Revolution. A brief lull came in 
the storm. But as Britain still insisted on the 
right to tax the colonies and made an impost 



THE WAYS DIVIDE 29 

on tea the test of her right, rebels in Boston 
accepted the challenge and were inflamed to 
violence ; they swarmed on a tea-ship which 
had entered the bay, dragged the packets from 
the hold, and cast them into the waters of the 
harbour. When news of this act of violence 
reached England, parhament passed a bill 
providing for the shutting up of the port of 
Boston and removing the seat of government 
to Salem. In 1774 General Gage, the recently 
appointed governor of Massachusetts, placed 
the colony under military rule, and it was cut 
off from the rest of the country. The signal 
for revolt was thus given, and a general re- 
volution soon followed. 

The colonists immediately divided into two 
parties ; on the one side were those who felt 
that they must obey what they thought to be 
the call of liberty ; on the other were those who 
had no desire, and felt no need, to follow a 
summons to insurrection against His Majesty 
the King. The red man began to see clearly 
that the whites, the * Long Knives,' brethren of 
the same race, would soon be at one another's 
throats, and that they, the natives, could not 
remain neutral when the war broke out. 

During these alarming days Sir William 
Johnson died, when scarcely sixty years of age. 



30 THE WAR CHIEF 

He had seen that the break with the motherland 
was coming, and the prospect was almost more 
than he could bear. On the very day of his 
death he had received dispatches from England 
that probably hastened his end. He was told, 
under the royal seal, of the great peril that lay 
in store for all the king's people, and he was 
urged to keep the Six Nations firm in their 
allegiance to the crown. On that morning, 
July II, 1774, the dying man called the Indians 
to council, and spoke what were to be his parting 
words to the tribes. They must, he said, stand 
by the king, undaunted and unmoved under 
every trial. A few hours later the gallant Sir 
William Johnson, the friend of all the sons 
of the forest, the guide and helper of Joseph 
Brant, had breathed his last. His estates and 
titles were inherited by his son John Johnson, 
who was also promoted to the rank of major- 
general in the army. The control of Indian 
Affairs passed into the hands of his son-in-law. 
Colonel Guy Johnson, an able man, but less 
popular and wanting the broad sympathies of 
the great superintendent. Brant was at once 
made secretary to Guy Johnson, and to these 
two men Sir William's work of dealing with the 
Indians now fell. Their task, laid on them by 
their king, was to keep the Six Nations true to 




COLONEL GUY JOHXSOX 
From the John Ross Robertson Collection in the Toronto Public Libnirv 



THE WAYS DIVIDE 31 

his cause in the hour when the tomahawk 
should leave its girdle and the war fires should 
again gleam sullenly in the depths of the forest. 
Joseph Brant set about this work with restless 
energy. He was no longer the stripling who 
had gone away to the West that he might aid in 
bending the pride of Pontiac. Ten years had 
passed, and now he was a mature man with 
an ever-broadening vision. Some time during 
these years he had reached the position among 
his tribesmen which he long had coveted. He 
had been recognized by the Mohawks as one of 
their chieftains. This honour he had won by 
right not of birth but of merit, and for this 
reason he was known as a * Pine-tree Chief.' 
Like the pine-tree, tall and strong and con- 
spicuous among the trees of the forest, he had 
achieved a commanding place in the Mohawk 
nation. True, he was a chief merely by gift of 
his tribe, but he seems, nevertheless, to have 
been treated with the same respect and confid- 
ence as the hereditary chiefs. He rejoiced in 
his new distinction. Evil days were ahead, and 
he was now in a position to do effective work 
on behalf of his people and of the British when 
the inevitable war should break out. A still 
greater honour was in store for him. When 
war was declared he at once became recognized 



32 THE WAR CHIEF 

as the war leader of the Six Nations — the 
War Chief. The hereditary successor of King 
Hendrick, who was slain at Lake George in 
1755, was Little Abraham ; but Little Abraham, 
it appears, desired to remain neutral in the 
impending struggle, and by common consent 
Brant assumed the leadership of the Iroquois 
in war. 

Two things favoured Brant in any appeal he 
might make in the interests of the British to 
the loyalty of the Six Nations. For over a 
hundred years they had taken from the colonial 
agents who represented the crown wampum 
belts as a sign of treaty obligations. Treaties 
had been made with the king ; the word of the 
red man had been given to the king. Promises 
made to them by the king's agents had always 
been performed. Why, therefore, should they 
now plight their faith to any other than their 
Great Father the King, who dwelt far over the 
waters ? Besides, by recent actions of the 
colonists, the resentment of the Indians had 
been fanned to a fury. In 1774 some colonial 
land-hunters were scouring the country of the 
Shawnees. Without any real cause they fell 
upon some redskins and butchered several in 
an inhuman way. Not satisfied with this act 
of cruelty, they seized two brave chiefs, Bald 



THE WAYS DIVIDE 33 

Eagle and Silver Heels, and killed them in cold 
blood. The anger of the Indians was aroused 
and they rallied under the banner of the 
noble Logan, ' Mingo Chief ' of the Shawnees. 
Against him the Virginians sent a large force of 
more than two thousand men. A fierce battle 
took place at the Great Kanawha river, at 
the point where that stream flows into the Ohio. 
For a time Logan and his Indian ally Cornstalk 
and their followers fought desperately, but in 
the end they were forced to flee across the Ohio. 
This war was short, indeed, but it had no 
just warrant, and the Indians could not forget 
the outrage that had been committed. The 
memory of it rankled with the Six Nations, 
especially among the Cayugas, to whom Logan 
was bound by ties of blood. 

While Joseph was doing his utmost to keep 
the Indians loyal and was keeping watch upon 
those who were plotting to win them from their 
allegiance to the crown. Sir John Johnson was 
growing anxious for his own life. So great 
was his fear of being killed or abducted that 
he increased his body-guard to five hundred 
men. At the same time, he placed swivel-guns 
about his house, in order to withstand a sudden 
attack. He energetically organized the settlers 
on his domains into a protecting force. In 

c 



34 THE WAR CHIEF 

particular the Highland loyalists in his district 
rallied to his aid, and soon a hundred and 
fifty brawny clansmen were ready to take the 
field at the shortest notice. 

But the Six Nations were by no means united 
in their loyalty to the crown. Brant saw that 
the tribe most wavering in its support was the 
Oneidas. He found that their missionary, 
Samuel Kirkland, was in league with the rebels, 
and sought to have this clergyman removed. 
Failing in this, he wrote to the Oneida chiefs, 
urging them to remain loyal to the king. A 
letter that an Oneida runner let fall at this time 
on an Indian path is the earliest bit of hand- 
writing that we have from Joseph Brant's pen. 
In it he warns the Oneidas against the subtle 
work which the colonists were carrying on. 
^ Guy Johnson is in great fear of being taken 
prisoner by the Bostonians,' he says. * We 
Mohawks are obliged to watch him constantly. 
Guy Johnson assures himself, and depends 
upon your coming to his assistance. . . . He 
believes not that you will assent to let him 
suffer.* The appeal thus made seems, however, 
to have met with little response from the 
Oneidas, and Brant was rebuffed. Even before 
this they had sent a letter to the governor of 
Connecticut expressing in plain terms their 



THE V/AYS DIVIDE 35 

desire to remain neutral when hostilities should 
commence. ' We cannot intermeddle in this 
dispute between two brothers/ was their 
decision. * The quarrel seems to be un- 
natural.' The Oneidas had the right to their 
opinion, but their conduct must have stung 
the heart of the chief of the Mohawks. Yet 
never for a moment did his courage fail. He 
knew that the bulk of the Six Nations were will- 
ing to give their life's blood in the service of 
the king. He and they would be true to the 
old and binding covenant which their fore- 
fathers had made as allies of the crown. * It 
will not do for us to break it/ said Brant, ' let 
what will become of us.' 

Civil war was now impending in the colonies. 
The battle of Lexington had been fought, and 
the whole country was taking breath before the 
plunge into the conflict. Guy Johnson and 
Brant were waiting to declaie themselves and 
the time was nearly ripe. The first move was 
made just after the Mohawk chiefs had been 
summoned to a council at Guy Park,^ about 
the end of May. Secret orders had come from 

1 *A beautiful situation immediately on the banlr of the 
Mohawk. The elegant stone mansion is yet [1865] upon the 
premises giving the best evidence of substantial building.' — 
William L. Stone, Life of Joseph Brant, vol. i. p. 71. 



36 THE WAR CHIEF 

General Gage, and Johnson knew precisely 
what course he was expected to follow. Leav- 
ing his house to what fate might befall it, he 
started westward with Brant and a force of 
Indians and white men. At their first im- 
portant stopping-place, Cosby's Manor, a letter 
was sent back to throw a blind across their 
trail. Then, with their faces still towards the 
setting sun, the loyal band wended their way 
through the dark mazes of the forest. 

After a weary journey the loyalist party 
emerged among the populous western villages of 
the Iroquois confederacy. There, at Ontario, 
south of the lake of that name, was held a 
great assembly, and fifteen hundred warriors 
listened to the messengers of the king. In reply 
the chiefs of the assembled throng expressed 
their willingness to ' assist his Majesty's 
troops in their operations.' Johnson and Brant 
then went on to Oswego, on the margin of the 
lake, where an even larger body heard their 
plea. Johnson prepared for the redskins a 
typical repast, and * invited them to feast on a 
Bostonian.' The Indians avowed their willing- 
ness to fight for the king. Then, while the 
summer days were long, a flotilla of canoes, in 
which were many of the most renowned chiefs 
of the Six Nations, set out eastward for Montreal 



THE WAYS DIVIDE 37 

over the sparkling waters of Lake Ontario. 
In one of the slender craft knelt Joseph Brant, 
paddle in hand, thoughtful and yet rejoicing. 
He was but thirty-three years old, and yet, 
by shrewdness in council and by courage on the 
field of battle, he already occupied a prominent 
place among the chiefs of the confederacy. 
Moreover, great days were ahead. Soon the 
canoes entered the broad St Lawrence and 
were gliding swiftly among its islets. With 
steady motion they followed its majestic 
course as it moved towards the sea. 



CHAPTER V 

ACROSS THE SEA 

Before many suns had set, this company of 
dusky warriors had brought their canoes to 
shore near the swift rapids which run by 
Montreal. The news of their coming was 
received with enthusiasm by the officers 
stationed at this place. Every friendly 
addition to the British ranks was of value now 
that war had begun. Sir Guy Carleton, the 
governor of Canada, was especially delighted 
that these bronzed stalwarts had made their 
appearance. He prized the abilities of the 
Indians in border warfare, and their arrival 
now might be of importance, since the local 
Canadian militia had not responded to the call 
to arms. The French seigneurs and clergy 
were favourable to the king's cause, but the 
habitants on the whole were not interested in 
the war, and Carleton's regular troops consisted 
of only eight hundred men of the Seventh and 
Twenty-Sixth regiments. 

88 



ACROSS THE SEA 39 

No time was lost by the governor in summon- 
ing the redskins to an interview. Chief Brant, 
it appears, was the leading spokesman for the 
Indians on this occasion, and a sentence or 
two of the speech made by Carleton has been 
preserved by Brant himself. ' I exhort you,' 
was Carleton's earnest request of the Indians, 

* to continue your adherence to the King, and 
not to break the solemn agreement made by 
your forefathers, for your own welfare is 
intimately connected with your continuing the 
alhes of his Majesty.' In reply the Indians 
asserted once more their ancient pledges. 

* We acknowledged,' said Brant, * that it 
would certainly be the best in the end for our 
families and ourselves to remain under the 
King's protection, whatever difficulties we 
might have to contend with.' 

In order that he might render due service 
to the army. Brant was put under military 
discipline, and was given a captain's com- 
mission in the king's forces. He was in 
Montreal when Ethan Allen, a colonial adven- 
turer, made an unauthorized attempt (July 
24> 1775) to surprise and capture the city. 
Carleton had been apprised of Allen's project ; 
the plan miscarried, and Allen, along with 
other members of his band, was sent to England 



40 THE WAR CHIEF 

as a prisoner of war. Meanwhile General 
Montgomery had been advancing from the 
south, and, in September, he laid siege to Fort 
St John, the English stronghold on the 
Richelieu river. This post was stoutly de- 
fended by Major Preston with a force of regulars 
until Fort Chambly, near by, fell into the 
enemy's hands, and further resistance was 
useless. Whether Brant's services were em- 
ployed in or about either of these forts can- 
not be ascertained, but we know that he had 
left the neighbourhood and was on his way 
to England before Montreal capitulated on 
November 17. 

Brant's visit to Montreal had no doubt an 
important influence on his career. This was 
perhaps the first time he had ever seen a sea- 
port.^ At this time Montreal had some five 
or six thousand inhabitants and was a walled 
town of growing commercial importance. It 
had several commodious religious houses, some 
large, well-built churches, and a number of 
handsome residences. As Brant stood on the 
river's bank, he saw a medley of craft afloat 
in the current: ships of the fur traders laden 
with peltry ; transports coming and going 

1 It is thought possible that he had gone down the St Lawrence 
as far as Montreal with Sir William Johnson in 1760. 



ACROSS THE SEA 41 

with food for the garrisons, or new men for 
the service ; sloops-of-war, lying at anchor 
with their complement of guns, grim and 
menacing. 

All this gripped as with an iron hand the 
imaginative nature of the Mohawk chief. The 
spirit of romance was aglow within him, and he 
had a wondering desire to see the lands that 
lay beyond the ocean. He would sail upon the 
high seas ; he would stand in the presence of 
the Great King. How beautiful was this land 
called England 1 and how powerful were its 
army and navy! Doubtless Guy Johnson and 
other officers at Montreal encouraged Brant 
to undertake the journey which he fain would 
make. It may be that it was they who first 
showed him how such a journey was possible. 
At any rate, before the ice had begun to lock 
the green waters of the St Lawrence, in the year 
1775, he had passed through the Gulf and was 
tossing on the billows of the deep Atlantic. 
Towards the end of the year he arrived, along 
v/ith Captain Tice, in the English metropolis. 
London had altered greatly since the days of 
Queen Anne more than half a century before, 
when his grandfather had been there. It had 
become a greater market for trade, and the 
common people had been elbowing their way 



42 THE WAR CHIEF 

to the parts where only fine residences had once 
stood. Two kings of the House of Hanover 
had in the meantime reigned and died, and now 
King George HI, another of that Hne, sat upon 
the throne. 

On reaching London Chief Brant was 
escorted to a small hostel of not very impos- 
ing appearance called ' The Swan v/ith Two 
Necks.' It was intended that he should soon 
be taken to other lodgings that would be more 
in keeping with his rank ; but the innkeeper 
and others were so kind to him that he was 
loth to leave, and could not be coaxed to other 
quarters during his whole stay in London. In 
the streets he was accustomed to dress like the 
Europeans of the day, but on state occasions 
he wore a gala costume, his head crowned with 
waving plumes and his body decked with those 
fancy ornaments that pleased the proud Indian. 
On the burnished tomahawk that glistened in 
his belt was traced the initial 'J,' followed by 
his Indian title, ' Thayendanegea.' 

Brant appeared at court and had audience 
with the king, for whose person he felt a sacred 
reverence. He loved freedom, but at the same 
time he always had a great respect for authority. 
A story is told of the pointed answer he made 
to his old instructor, Dr Wheelock, who, think- 



ACROSS THE SEA 43 

ing to draw Brant over to the side of the 
colonists, or at least to keep him neutral, had 
written him a long and earnest appeal. The 
Mohawk chief replied in a kindly fashion, 
referring to the pleasant hours he had spent 
at the school. He remembered especially the 
prayers that were said in the household, and 
one prayer in particular that had been repeated 
over and over again ; as they bent their heads 
in entreaty before the Maker of all things, the 
request had ever been * that they might be able 
to live as good subjects, to fear God and honour 
the King.^ 

Not only did high officials in London treat 
Brant with consideration, but men of learning, 
as well as of social position, vied with one 
another to make his visit interesting and 
pleasant. Among those who entertained him 
was James Boswell, who knew all the gossip 
of London society and v/as a man of rare 
talents. He took a peculiar liking to the 
bronzed chief of the Six Nations and persuaded 
him to sit for his portrait. The Earl of 
Warwick also wished to have Brant's picture, 
and the result was that he sat for George 
Romney, one of the most famous artists of the 
day. This portrait was probably painted at 
the artist's house in Cavendish Square, and we 



44 THE WAR CHIEF 

may accept it as a good likeness of Brant as he 
appeared at this time. With head erect, the 
strong-knit figure of the chief stands at repose. 
The eyes are mild and wide-set and about the 
lips a smile is playing. In the portrait v/e see, 
too, the resolute heart, the thoughtful mind, 
and the restless energy that made Joseph 
Brant a ruler of the native races. 

On being asked as to the help he might render 
to the English arms in the New World, Brant 
asserted strongly that he and his people were 
loyal. He said that, as War Chief, he would 
lead three thousand of his warriors into the 
struggle, and that they would fight manfully 
as subjects of the king. He knew full well 
how desperate the contest was going to be, and 
wishing to have some article on his body that 
would identify him in case of death, he bought 
from a London goldsmith a ring, in which he 
had his full name engraved. This he wore 
through the vicissitudes of many a long year. 

Before the winter was over Brant was 
anxious to return to his tribes, for he knew that 
when the hatchet was whirling the wigwam 
was more fitting for him that the palaces of 
London. Accordingly, in the spring of 1776, 
he set out for his western home. 



CHAPTER VI 

BRANT MEETS HERKIMER 

When the ship on which Brant was a pas- 
senger touched the shores of America, he was 
landed secretly somewhere near New York 
city. He was now face to face with the diffi- 
culty of reaching his friends — a task that 
called forth all his alertness. He was in a 
hostile country, a long way from the forests 
of the Mohawk valley lying above Albany. 
But he was a wily redskin, too clever to be 
caught, and after adroitly evading many dangers 
he eventually reached the border country and 
crossed over safely into Canada. 

In July 1776, several weeks before his arrival, 
the colonists had declared their independ- 
ence. The language of the Declaration of In- 
dependence was confident, but soon after it 
was uttered the colonists suffered a series of 
defeats. Arnold was beaten by Carleton on 
Lake Champlain and Washington was forced 
to retreat until he had crossed the Delaware. 



46 THE WAR CHIEF 

It has been said that Brant took part in the 
Battle of the Cedars, where, on the north bank 
of the St Lawrence, Captain Forster over- 
powered a body of four hundred Americans; 
but this occurred in May 1776, and since 
Brant's ship did not arrive until July he could 
not have been one of the combatants in this 
engagement. What Brant was doing during 
the greater part of the year following his arrival 
in Canada has not been recorded. In the 
spring of 1777 we are able to pick up his trail 
again. While the armies were preparing for 
another summer campaign. Brant returned 
once more to his old haunts near the frontier 
of the colony of New York, taking up his 
position at a place called Oquaga on the 
Susquehanna river, south of the Mohawk 
valley. This was a favourite resort of the 
Indians, and Brant was well aware that from 
this point he could carry on to advantage a 
guerilla warfare against the rebels and their 
sympathizers. 

His coming sent a shiver of dread through 
all the neighbouring settlements. Hitherto 
this part of the colony had been remote from 
the main theatre of the war, but now that 
Brant was there any moment might bring an 
attack, and the inhabitants began to make 



BRANT MEETS HERKIMER 47 

ready their defences. More particularly were 
steps for protection taken in Cherry Valley, 
a rich and fertile area stretching up towards 
the Mohawk. Because of its strength and 
situation, the house of Colonel Samuel Camp- 
bell, one of the prominent farmers in the 
valley, was selected for a fortified post, and 
logs and earth were banked about it and the 
two adjoining barns. Thither from all sides 
the people collected, thinking that at any 
moment the chief of the Mohawks might 
pounce upon them. 

Brant did, indeed, intend to assail this 
fortress, as it contained many of the leading 
rebels of that district, but a strange incident 
deceived him with regard to the strength of the 
place and made him change his purpose. It 
was not a common thing for him to make 
errors of judgment, but for once he was misled — 
hoodwinked — in a very simple manner. Like a 
wise commander he had set out to recon- 
noitre the enemy's position, and proceeded in 
the direction of Campbell's house with a small 
body of men. When about a mile away, he 
concealed himself behind some thick shrubbery 
on the crest of a hillock. As he peered through 
the tangled foliage his view was obscured, and 
he descried what seemed to him to be a battalion 



48 THE WAR CHIEF 

of troops marching near the house. This was 
nothing more than a number of boys with 
wooden guns in their hands playing at soldiers 
and parading in great glee upon the grassy 
sward beside the fortified house ; but so well 
did they perform that Brant imagined they were 
soldiers training for active service in the war. 
* Colonel Campbell has got his house well 
guarded, I perceive/ he said, turning about 
and addressing his followers. Thinking that 
it would be folly to venture near the spot with 
his slender force. Brant decided to retire and 
he took the road leading towards the Mohawk 
river. The same evening, as he lay in wait 
with his men behind a large boulder, two horse- 
men approached. One was an officer named 
Wormwood, the other a settler. Without 
having suspected an ambush, they suddenly 
found themselves in the clutches of an enemy. 
In the struggle Lieutenant Wormwood met his 
death, much to Brant's sorrow, as they had 
been good friends before the war. After this 
event the chief returned to Oquaga. 

As the weeks passed, his following on the 
Susquehanna grew apace. The name of the 
great War Chief had a charm about it that drew 
to his command warriors from every part of 
the forest. Little wonder that the settlers 



BRANT MEETS HERKIMER 49 

became more and more alarmed. At length 
they resolved to try to negotiate peace with him. 
One of their number, Nicholas Herkimer, de- 
cided to go to the Susquehanna and there have 
an interview with the chief himself. Herkimer 
was a citizen noted ^ for his integrity and had 
been made a brigadier-general in the provincial 
army. He had formerly lived three mi'es 
from Brant, when his home was on the upper 
Mohawk, and knew him well. Nothing has 
ever been said to show that Herkimer lacked 
courage. But he was vain enough to think 
that a few words from him might weaken 
Brant's steadfast loyalty. Furthermore, like 
too many frontiersmen of his day, he held the 
Indian race in little esteem and, as we shall 
see, he did not scruple to treat them with the 
basest kind of treachery. The plea may be 
made that he was apprehensive of duplicity 
on the part of the Mohawk chief, but this does 
not wholly excuse his conduct. 

After duly making his plans, Herkimer in- 
vited Brant to meet him at Unadilla, on the 
Susquehanna, higher up than Oquaga. He 
arrived at this place in the month of July with 
three hundred and eighty militiamen, but 
had to wait a week before Brant put in an 
appearance. The fact that he came with such 

D 



50 THE WAR CHIEF 

a numerous escort was well fitted to cause 
suspicion. Captain Brant also came with a 
large contingent of warriors, pitched his camp 
at some little distance from the Americans, 
and sent a runner to ask the general why he 
had been honoured with this visit. Herkimer 
replied that he merely wished to have a talk 
with his brother Brant and that would be all. 
The runner said he would bear the message 
back, but first asked slyly whether all these men 
were anxious to talk with the War Chief also. 
Before departing, Brant's messenger signified 
that the colonials must not trespass upon the 
field that stretched away towards the Indians' 
camp. About half-way between the two 
parties a shed was now put up, large enough 
to seat two hundred people. It was agreed 
that each side should send a deputation to 
this hall, where a meeting would be held. On 
no account, however, were any firearms or 
other weapons to be brought from the camps. 
Upon the day appointed Herkimer was the 
first to reach the spot, while Brant arrived a 
little later. The Indian chief had scented 
danger and was strictly on his guard. With 
him were two pale-faces, a Mohawk chief, 
about two score warriors, and an Indian woman. 
It was the custom in such a parley to draw 



BRANT MEETS HERKIMER 51 

a circle on the ground and for the leaders to 
stand or sit within this. Herkimer and two 
officers entered the circle, while Brant was 
accompanied by the inferior chieftain. Brant 
was all the time watching the general like a 
hawk and again asked him what was the mean- 
ing of his visit. Herkimer repeated that it was 
only for the sake of good fellowship. 

' And all these have come on a friendly 
visit too ? ' asked Captain Brant. * All want 
to see the poor Indians ; it is very kind.' Un- 
affected by Brant's irony, Herkimer next re- 
ferred to the troubles between England and the 
colonies, and tried to draw out Brant. The 
chief was slow and taciturn in answering, but 
at last burst forth in no uncertain language. 
He said that * the Indians were in concert with 
the King, as their fathers had been ; . . . that 
General Herkimer and his followers had joined 
the Boston people against their Sovereign.' 
For all that, he had no fear of the result and 
knew ' that although the Boston people were 
resolute, yet the King would humble them.' 

The meeting did not break up before there 
were signs of coming violence, but finally better 
feelings appeared to prevail and they decided 
to assemble again on the following morning. 

In the interval Herkimer is said to have 



52 THE WAR CHIEF 

devised one of the vilest schemes that has ever 
been charged against a man of his rank. He 
selected a settler, named Joseph Waggoner, and 
three other trusty men as his accomplices. 
These persons were to assist him in a conspiracy 
against Brant's life that was simply an attempt 
at murder. The details of the plot were 
furnished in a confession made afterwards by 
Waggoner. As the parties stood in the circle, 
the four accomplices were to take a cue from 
Herkimer and shoot the Indians down with- 
out warning. But Herkimer was reckoning 
without his host. Joseph Brant was far too 
shrewd to walk headlong into such an open 
snare. It is plain that he had come to suspect 
the intentions of his adversary. Next morning, 
as he stepped into the circle, he assumed a grave 
and dignified mien. Addressing Herkimer, he 
spoke in stern accents : 

* I have five hundred warriors with me, 
armed and ready for battle. You are in my 
power ; but as we have been friends and neigh- 
bours, I will not take advantage of you.' 

As he ended, a great band of redskins advanced 
from the engirdling forest, and the war-whoop 
rent the air. Backed by his faithful warriors, 
the War Chief could speak in tones of authority 
to his foe. He did not forget to thank him for 



BRANT MEETS HERKIMER 53 

his coming, but bade him direct his steps once 
again towards his home on the Mohawk. 
Thereupon Brant turned about and strode away 
among the trees. Just then thick clouds blotted 
out the sky ; a terrible storm swept in violence 
across the land, a fitting presage, as men 
thought, of the scourge of war that must now 
bring ruin and havoc in its wake. 



CHAPTER VII 

FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 

Fresh from undoing Herkimer's ugly plot, 
Brant abandoned the Susquehanna and went 
off in the direction of Lake Ontario. A great 
Indian council was to be heki at Oswego, and 
possibly he was hurrying to this meeting. 

A vigorous campaign had been set on foot for 
the midsummer of 1777 by General Burgoyne, 
who was now in command of the British forces 
at Montreal. It was arranged that Burgoyne 
should strike southward with the main army 
until he reached the Hudson river. Mean- 
while another body of troops, under Lieutenant- 
Colonel St Leger, would make a long detour 
by way of Lake Ontario and the western part 
of the colony of New York. The object of 
this latter movement was to rally the Indians, 
collect a force of loyalists, and fight through 
the heart of the country with the hope of 
forming a junction with Burgoyne 's army at 
Albany. 



FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 55 

St Leger reached Oswego about the middle 
of July. There he was joined by a regiment 
of loyalists, the famous Royal Greens, and a 
company of Tory Rangers under Colonel John 
Butler. Brant was present with two hundred 
Mohawks, while a large band of Senecas were 
also grouped under the king's standard. In all 
there were seventeen hundred men, fully one 
thousand of whom were Indians under the 
supreme command of Captain Brant. 

On starting out, St Leger, who knew that a 
surprise might be attempted, outlined his order 
of march with great care. A detachment from 
one of the battalions was sent on ahead, and 
this was later joined by Captain Brant with a 
party of his warriors. Five columns of Indians 
went in front, in single file ; the flanks also 
were protected by Indians at a distance of one 
hundred paces from the central column. 

It was intended that the first blow should be 
struck at Fort Stanwix, on the head-waters of 
the Mohawk. This was an old English strong- 
hold that had fallen into decay, but was being 
repaired and defended in the interest of the 
revolting colonies by Colonel Peter Ganse- 
voort. It lay on the traffic-road to Oneida 
Lake, and was considered a strong point of 
vantage. Its garrison was made up of about 



56 THE WAR CHIEF 

seven hundred and fifty colonials. They had 
provisions enough to last for six weeks and a 
goodly supply of ammunition, and hoped to be 
able to withstand attack until help should 
arrive. 

The English leader reached this fort on 
August 3, and immediately began to invest it. 
A demand was sent in under a flag of truce 
calling upon the garrison to surrender. St 
Leger said it was his desire * to spare when 
possible ' and only * to strike where necessary.* 
He was willing to buy their stock of provisions 
and grant security to all within the fort. The 
offer was generous, but the garrison rejected 
it with a good-tempered disdain and the siege 
went on with renewed earnestness. The 
Indians, hiding in the thickets, poured their fire 
upon those who were working on the walls. 
The presence of the savages lent a weird fury 
to the scene, made it, indeed, wellnigh un- 
canny. One evening in particular they 
* spread themselves through the woods, com- 
pletely encircling the Fort, and commenced a 
terrible yelling, which was continued at in- 
tervals the greater part of the night.' Fort 
Stanwix was soon in dire straits. The news of 
the investment had sent a thrill through the 
whole of the Mohawk valley. The colonials 



FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 57 

came together in haste, and soon about a 
thousand of them, led by Nicholas Herkimer, 
were ascending the river in straggling array. 
They hurried on their course with such zeal 
that they did not even send out scouting parties 
to warn them of danger and prevent surprise. 
On August 5 this relief force was close to 
Oriskany, and only eight miles distant from 
St Leger's position. Herkimer now matured 
a clever plan, the success of which he con- 
fidently expected would bring him victory. 
He chose three men and sent them forward 
to gain entrance to the fort and to tell Ganse- 
voort that help was coming. The moment 
they arrived the besieged were to fire three guns 
in rapid succession. This was to be Herkimer's 
signal ; he would speed at once along the 
road to the British position and fling himself on 
its rear, while, at the same time, Gansevoort 
must issue forth and attack it in front. St 
Leger's army, it was hoped, would crumble 
in hopeless defeat between two shattering 
fires. 

As fortune would have it, this ruse was 
doomed to complete failure. The messengers 
set out at eleven o'clock at night, and Herkimer 
thought they would surely reach the fort by 
three in the morning. But he waited in vain 



S8 THE WAR CHIEF 

the whole night through ; no sound of 
cannonade disturbed the quiet air. As the 
hours crept by his officers became fretful and 
impatient ; in the end they declared for an 
immediate advance, denouncing Herkimer as 
a faltering coward. At length the old man, 
sorely against his will, gave the order to march. 
The relief party streamed through the forest 
with disordered ranks. In the meantime 
Brant's Indians had not been idle. They had 
carefully watched the manoeuvres of the 
hostile force, and had given timely warning. 
St Leger at once took steps to bar the road to 
attack. For this purpose a division of the 
Royal Greens was detailed, as well as the Tory 
Rangers, with Butler in command. The bulk 
of the contingent, however, were Indians, and 
it fell to the lot of Joseph Brant to fasten 
Herkimer in the strong meshes of his net. 

The ground over which the Americans had 
to pass was uneven, and this had not escaped 
the watchful eye of Brant. He was an adept 
in the tactics of Indian warfare, and now used 
his knowledge to good effect. Herkimer had 
not gone far along the narrow trail before he 
found himself in difficulties. The road slanted 
down into a boggy hollow some six or seven 
miles below Fort Stanwix. This hollow had 



FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 59 

a winding course in the form of a crescent, and 
across its march a causeway of heavy logs had 
been built. Between the ends of the encircling 
ravine there was an elevated position, thickly 
wooded and dry. Upon this Brant had laid 
his ambush, having posted his men with only 
a slight opening in their ranks towards the 
incline of the road. 

Down into the gully came the colonials, their 
wagons and a small guard bringing up the 
rear. As they toiled up the opposing ascent, 
the gap was closed upon them, and they were 
surrounded on every side. The rear-guard 
were left behind with the wagons and fled in 
a tumult, with a throng of Indians in close 
pursuit. From the sheltering trees a deadly 
fusillade swept the hapless files of those who 
were hemmed about on the rising ground. 
Darting from their cover, the Indians sprang 
upon such as lay wounded and dispatched them 
with knife and tomahawk. 

The first onslaught had resulted in a carnival 
of blood. Now the colonials, owing to their 
numbers, were able to get together and to place 
themselves on the defensive. The fight soon 
became hand to hand and there ensued one of 
the most gruesome melees of the whole War 
of the Revolution. The men were able to 



6o THE WAR CHIEF 

look into one another's faces ; they fought at 
quarters too close for bullets, and relied upon 
gun-stock, knife-blade, and bayonet. There 
was slashing and cutting, clubbing and 
throttling, and often in their frenzy they 
grappled tight and died in one another's fast 
embrace. In the midst of it all Herkimer 
proved himself no craven. With his leg 
ripped by a bullet he propped himself against a 
tree, lit his pipe, and directed the order of the 
battle. Above the din rang out clear the wild 
cries of the red men, their painted bodies flash- 
ing bright among the trees. In the forefront 
was Brant, fighting vehemently, his towering 
form set firmly, his deep voice echoing loud. 

While the battle was at its height, rolling 
clouds had gathered and a drenching storm 
checked the combatants in their work of 
slaughter. The colonials were still fighting 
desperately, but for them the day was lost. 
After the few moments' interval they re-formed 
their scattered ranks and resolutely faced the 
foe. No sooner, however, had the struggle 
again commenced than the noise of cannon 
came reverberating upon the moist air. The 
appointed messengers had arrived at Fort 
Stanwix, many hours late, and the signal had 
been given. Deceived by the cannonading and 



FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 6i 

fearing that St Leger might be in distress, the 
loyalists rapidly drew off with their Indian 
allies, leaving their opponents on the crimson 
field. But so exhausted were the colonials 
by the fierce fighting they had experienced that 
they could not follow after the retreating army 
and were forced to move dejectedly down the 
Mohawk valley. Four hundred of their men 
had fallen in the battle, dead or wounded, 
nearly half the number that had entered the 
swampy ravine. On a litter of green boughs 
General Herkimer was carried to his stone 
house on the river, where, a few weeks after the 
cruel fight, he died with the same fortitude that 
he had shown when under fire. 

The laurels for this victory at Oriskany 
rested with Captain Brant. He had com- 
manded the greater part of the loyalist forces 
and his plan had placed the enemy at their 
mercy. Thanks to this success, the colonials 
had received a stunning blow, and Colonel 
St Leger's army was possibly saved from an 
utter rout. But the Indians had paid a heavy 
price for their victory ; many of their chiefs 
and warriors lay dead upon the field. 

The siege of Fort Stanwix was kept up until 
August 22. By this time St Leger had reached 
a point one hundred and fifty yards from 



62 THE WAR CHIEF 

its outer wall. During the interval the word 
of Herkimer's defeat had brought General 
Arnold with a strong body of militiamen to 
the rescue. While still some distance away 
this commander thought that he might create 
a false alarm in the English camp. A half- 
witted fellow, who went by the name of Hon- 
Yost Schuyler, had been captured and was in 
Arnold's camp. He was freed on condition 
that he should go to the English camp and give 
an exaggerated account of the new force which 
was coming to the relief of Fort Stanwix. 
When he reached the camp Schuyler went first 
among the Indians, showing a coat riddled 
with bullets, and told of the host that was on 
its way. When asked how many there were, 
he pointed to the fluttering leaves above his 
head. The redskins always had a super- 
stitious awe of this stupid fellow and now they 
were terror-stricken by his words and antics. 
Panic seized the besiegers. Perhaps Brant 
tried to quell the disorder, but, if he did, his 
efforts were in vain. St Leger himself seemed 
to share in the panic, for he beat a hasty 
retreat, following the road leading to Oswego. 
But the War Chief of the Six Nations — it is 
pleasant to relate — did not retreat with him. 
While St Leger journeyed to the north, Brant had 



FORT STANWIX AND ORISKANY 63 

called together a band of his willing followers. 
Then he took one of those flying marches 
which made him famous in border warfare. 
Crossing the territory of the enemy with great 
skill and daring, he hurried eastward, and in a 
short time he was in the camp of General 
Burgoyne on the banks of the Hudson. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 

Brant was now regularly in the pay of the 
British, and until the close of the war he was 
to be employed actively in weakening the 
colonists by destroying their settlements in- 
tervening between the populous centres of the 
Atlantic states and the borders of Canada. In 
this unhappy fratricidal v/ar each side used the 
Indians to strike terror into the hearts of its 
enemies, and as a result, in the quiet valleys 
lying between the Hudson and Ohio and the 
Great Lakes, there was an appalling destruc- 
tion of property and loss of life. Brant proved 
himself one of the most successful of the leaders 
in this border warfare, and while he does not 
seem ever to have been guilty of wanton cruelty 
himself, those under him, on more than one 
occasion, ruthlessly murdered their foes, irre- 
spective of age or sex. That he tacitly per- 
mitted his followers to murder and scalp 
unarmed settlers shows that he was still much 

C-4 



FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 65 

of a savage. As one historian has written : ' He 
was not a devil, and not an angel.' It is true, 
as we shall see, that on several occasions he 
intervened to save Tory friends and acquaint- 
ances, but these are isolated examples, and his 
raids were accompanied by all the horrors of 
Indian warfare. The only excuse that can be 
offered for him is that he was no worse than 
his age, and that the white loyalist leaders, such 
as the Butlers, as well as the colonial com- 
manders of the revolutionists, were equally 
callous regarding the destruction of property 
and life. 

Brant appears to have spent the winter of 
1777 and 1778 in Canada, but with the opening 
of military operations in the spring he was again 
at Oquaga and Unadilla. One of his first 
exploits of the year 1778 was at Springfield, a 
small settlement lying some miles beyond 
Cherry Valley at the head of Lake Otsego. 
When news of Brant's approach reached this 
place, a number of the men-folk fled for their 
lives. Those who remained were taken 
prisoners. The chief gathered the women and 
children into one house and set the torch to 
all the other buildings in the settlement. 
Brant's care for the weaker sex and the children 
during this expedition shows that he had a 

E 



66 THE WAR CHIEF 

tenderness of heart unusual among the red 
men of his time. 

During the hay-making season the chief was 
reconnoitring in the Schoharie district, which 
was situated some distance west of Albany 
and south of the Mohawk river. The scythe 
had been at work in the tall grass, and a 
farmer's lad was busy in a sunlit meadow 
raking hay. As he dragged the loose bundles 
over the stubble, he heard a footfall in his rear. 
Turning about he saw that a sturdy Indian 
dressed in warrior's garb had stolen upon him. 
The boy involuntarily raised his rake as though 
to strike. 

* Do not be afraid, young man,* the intruder 
said in good English ; ' I will not hurt you.' 

The warrior then asked the youth in friendly 
terms where a Mr Foster, a loyalist, had his 
dwelling. He went further and asked the lad 
his name. 

* I know your father well,' said the redskin, 
when the boy had answered his questions ; 
* he lives neighbour to Captain M'Kean. I 
know M'Kean very well, and a fine fellow he is 
too.' 

The boy was now quite reassured that the 
Indian would do him no harm, and boldly 
inquired who his interrogator might be. 



FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 67 

* My name is Brant/ answered the redskin, 
although he pondered for a moment before 
replying. 

' What ! Joseph Brant ? ' said the youth, as 
a sharp thrill went coursing through his veins. 

* No ! ' answered the warrior, * I am a cousin 
of his ' ; but a smile lit up his dark countenance, 
and the boy knew that his denial was just a 
bit of native humour. Thereupon Brant dis- 
appeared in the direction of Foster's house. 
The boy at once rushed from the field to the 
fortified post near by to tell his story, and a 
hue and cry was soon raised. A party hurried 
to the loyalist's house to seek Brant, but he 
was not there. Foster said that he had never 
come and that he knew nothing of him. So, 
checkmated in their search, the group of would- 
be captors had to wheel about and go back 
disappointed to their fortress. 

Brant was fast gaining an unsavoury reputa- 
tion which he but partly merited. Owing to 
the character of the country in which he was 
fighting, and to the lack of discipline in the 
force under his command, destruction of 
property and plunder were certain to occur. 
Brant, as we shall see, did little to discourage 
this among his warriors. His argument was 
that his antagonists had taken up arms against 



68 THE WAR CHIEF 

their lawful king. As rebels, their lands and 
property were forfeited to the crown and were 
justly liable to seizure by the king's forces. 
To the settlers on the border, however. Brant 
was looked upon as a ruthless marauder, 
thirsting for blood. Whenever acts of wanton 
cruelty took place, the blame was generally 
laid at his door. This explains the bitterness of 
their attitude to him both during and after the 
conflict and the singular fear which his name 
inspired among them. 

At Unadilla Brant had begun to fortify an 
area which lent itself to defence, and thither 
the tribesmen flocked from the surrounding 
districts. So determined were the settlers to 
capture him that they offered a reward to any 
one who would bring them any knowledge of 
his movements. Even men like Captain 
M^Kean, whom Brant had mentioned so kindly 
to the farmer's boy, were hot upon his trail. 
This officer set out with five other men in 
order, if possible, to effect Brant's capture. 
While on their quest the little party came one 
night to the house of a Quaker. To their great 
delight, the Quaker told them that Brant had 
been at his place during the day and would come 
back. He warned them, however, that Brant 
was prepared to meet them, and that if he re- 



FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 69 

turned suddenly their lives would be in danger. 
M^Kean, however, was stubborn in his resolve 
to stay. 

* Your house, friend Sleeper,' he said, with a 
show of bravado, ' shall be my fort to-night.' 

But the Quaker would have none of them, 
and sent the searchers on their way. Then 
Captain M^Kean wrote a letter to Brant. 
Placing this in a stick, he cast it on an Indian 
path, where it was soon found by a redskin 
and carried to the War Chief's wigwam. In 
the letter M^Kean arraigned Brant for the 
ferocious manner in which he was fighting, 
and dared the Mohawk chief to single combat, 
or to send a chosen body of men to meet him 
in fair field against an equal number. If he 
showed his face in Cherry Valley, threatened 
IVPKean, ' they would change him from a 
Brant into a Goose.' 

Brant knew the impulsive nature of M'Kean 
and took this amusing letter for what it was 
worth. Yet the letter was not without its 
effect upon him. They had dared him ; they 
had taunted him with threats ; he would show 
them that Joseph Brant would have a day of 
reckoning and that right early. ' Cherry 
Valley people,' he wrote in the postscript of 
a short note sent to an ardent loyalist, ' [are] 



70 THE WAR CHIEF 

very bold, and intended to make nothing of us; 
they call us wild geese, but I know the contrary.* 
Early in July there occurred a horrible 
massacre in the valley of Wyoming, an ex- 
tensive region in Pennsylvania on the north 
branch of the Susquehanna river. For many 
years after this outrage it was commonly be- 
lieved that Brant was the leader of the Indians 
in this tragic affair. The valley of Wyoming 
had once been a possession of the tribes of the 
Six Nations but, in 1754, they had disposed of 
their rights in its soil to a colonizing company. 
When the Revolutionary War began it was 
already well peopled with settlers. On account 
of the levy made upon its inhabitants by the 
Continental Army of Washington, most of its 
able-bodied men were absent at the war. Such 
was the situation when six hundred British 
troops and provincials, together with five 
hundred Indians, the whole under the com- 
mand of Colonel John Butler, descended into 
the valley. A feeble attempt was made at 
resistance, but the overwhelming number of the 
invaders brushed the defenders aside, and the 
scenes of carnage which followed were barbaric. 
Older American historians, such as Marshall, 
Ramsey, and Drake, asserted that Brant was 
present with his scalp-hunting followers. 



FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 71 

British writers, following them, fell into the 
same error. Thomas Campbell's poem, 
* Gertrude of Wyoming,' written in 1809, gives 
a gruesome picture of the episode, telling of the 
work which was done by the ' monster Brant.* 
During his visit to England in 1823, the War 
Chief's youngest son, John Brant, vindicated 
his father in a letter to Campbell, and showed 
that the reference to his father in this poem 
was based on false information. He declared 
that ' living witnesses ' had convinced him that 
his father was not in the neighbourhood of 
Wyoming at the time of the massacre. Other 
testimony has been forthcoming to support the 
claims which John Brant then made. It has 
been shown that the tribesmen of the Six 
Nations whom Butler had with him were 
Senecas, while the rest were Indians from the 
western tribes, and that Brant's tribe, the 
Mohawks, were not present. Nevertheless the 
Wyoming massacre differs only in degree from 
other atrocities in which, it must be confessed. 
Brant took part. In the month, indeed, in 
which the vale of Wyoming was being bathed 
in blood, he swept down on the little hamlet of 
Andrustown, and, bearing away a few captives 
and much booty, disappeared with his followers 
in the surrounding forest. 



72 THE WAR CHIEF 

It was now nearing the time of harvest, and 
in the Mohawk valley the grain had ripened to 
a golden brown. Even amid the din of war 
men must live, and so the settlers began to 
garner the season's crop. Nowhere on the 
river were there fuller barns than in the popu- 
lous district that went by the name of the 
German Flatts. Bordering the Mohawk river 
on either side, it stretched for ten miles along 
the valley, rich in soil, and with broad green 
pastures and plenteous herds. The settlers 
knew that Brant was not far distant, and they 
grew more afraid of attack with each passing 
day. They had two strongholds to which they 
could flee in case of trouble, Fort Herkimer on 
one bank of the river. Fort Dayton on the 
other ; but these would be of little use to the 
settlers if they had not sufficient warning of 
the approach of the enemy. Mindful of this, 
they sent four of their number to act as scouts 
and to warn the settlement of any danger. 
While on this mission three of the party met 
with death at the hands of their adversaries, 
but the fourth escaped and hastened back to 
the German Flatts. One evening, just before 
sunset, he arrived with the fearful tidings that 
Brant was moving up the river with a large 
band of Indians and would soon be upon them. 



FIGHTING ON THE FRONTIER 73 

The alarm was spread through the valley, and 
men, women, and children gathered up what 
articles of value they could take with them in 
their hurried flight, and rushed pell-mell to the 
forts. During the evening some carried off a 
portion of their household effects in small 
boats. In the meantime Brant had come to 
the outskirts of the settlement, where he and 
his redskins lay under cover in the dark- 
ness. Then, even before the first gleam of 
daylight had begun to slant across the valley, 
the Indians were flitting like ghostly spectres 
in and out among the buildings. Almost at 
the same moment flames arose in every direc- 
tion, flashing and darting against the morning 
sky. Powerless to stay the destruction, the 
settlers, huddled behind their defences, wit- 
nessed a melancholy sight. Houses and barns, 
everything that could be given to the fire, were 
soon a heap of smoking embers. 

Brant had no means of conducting a siege 
properly, as he was without cannon ; so he 
made no effort to capture the forts. But 
he did not check his warriors from roaming 
at will over the valley. Running down the 
slopes into the pasture land, they rounded 
up the horses, the herds of black cattle, and 
the browsing sheep; and, having collected 



74 THE WAR CHIEF 

these together, they drove them from the 
meadows and disappeared with them among 
the trees. Before sundown they were many 
miles away, leaving behind desolation and 
blank dismay. 



CHAPTER IX 

CHERRY VALLEY 

The next occurrences in Brant's life are even 
more deplorable than those narrated in the pre- 
ceding chapter. The Cherry Valley episode, 
about to be described, can only be regarded as a 
blot on British arms, as great a blot as Wyoming. 
A peaceful farming district was devastated ; 
peasants were plundered and slain. It is 
true that some of them were in arms against 
British rule, but as a whole they were quietly 
engaged in farming operations, striving to 
build up homes for themselves on the outskirts 
of civilization. In this work of devastation 
and death Brant was only second in command ; 
the leader v/as a white man and a British officer. 
Undoubtedly the colonial troops had treated 
their loyalist fellow-countrymen with extreme 
cruelty, but this does not excuse the ruthless 
conduct of Butler and Brant in Cherry Valley. 

A haze was now brooding over the Susque- 
hanna, and the autumn leaves were being 



76 THE WAR CHIEF 

tinged with red. The struggle of the year 
1778 seemed over and Brant decided to spend 
the winter at Niagara. Accordingly he set out 
with a band of warriors from his entrenched 
position at Unadilla and went forward by easy 
stages along the old and well-beaten Indian 
trail leading towards Lake Ontario. He had 
proceeded well on his way when, to his sur- 
prise, a party of former allies crossed his path 
in the forest. Led by Captain Walter N. Butler, 
a son of Colonel John Butler, the notorious 
leader at Wyoming, a body of the Tory Rangers 
who had been with Brant at Oriskany were 
going eastward. In 1777 their youthful officer 
had suffered harsh imprisonment among the 
enemy, and, burning for vengeance, he was 
making a late-season tramp into the rebels* 
country. He had asked for a number of his 
father's raiders, and his request had been 
granted. He was also allowed the privilege of 
taking Brant along with him, should the chief- 
tain be found willing to join his force. 

On meeting with Brant so opportunely by 
the way, he gave him an outline of the measures 
of retaliation which he proposed to adopt. As 
the scheme was unfolded, the war-scarred chief 
of the Mohawks saw that he was meant to 
serve under this raw and headstrong youth= 



CHERRY VALLEY 77 

Brant was ready for almost any work that 
might be of service to his king, but he was 
at first reluctant to serve under Butler. The 
situation between the two leaders became 
strained, but at last Brant gave in ; their 
differences were patched up, and the two men 
came to friendly terms. Orders were issued 
by Brant to his motley throng of redskins, and 
five hundred of them reversed their march. 
The united contingent of seven hundred men 
first headed for the banks of the Tioga river, 
one of the branches of the Susquehanna. Here 
a conference was held, and it was agreed that 
they should make a combined attack upon the 
settlers of Cherry Valley. To Butler this was 
more than pleasing, eager as he was to pay off 
what he considered a heavy score. The heart 
of the War Chief throbbed with savage delight. 
A flaunting challenge still rang in his ears ; the 
settlers had invited him to enter their valley, 
and now he would answer their gibing call. 
Little did the inhabitants of Cherry Valley 
dream what was in store for them. During 
the summer they had carried most of their 
movable property to a well-built fortress. But 
as everything had now grown tranquil, they 
had taken it back to their homes again. Yet 
hardly had this been accomplished before 



78 THE WAR CHIEF 

Colonel Ichabod Alden, commandant of the 
fort, received a note from an official source 
telling him that enemies were near at hand. 

In spite of the trustworthy source from which 
it came, Colonel Alden gave barely any heed 
to this warning message. He declared that 
the threatened danger was but an idle rumour, 
that all would be well, and that he would take 
every precaution for the safety of his people. 
On November 9 spies were sent out in different 
directions with a view to getting fuller in- 
formation. One body of these went boldly 
down the Susquehanna, where their own care- 
lessness brought about their undoing. At 
nightfall they lit a fire, and, wrapping them- 
selves up snugly, had gone fast asleep. But to 
their astonishment, as they rubbed their eyes 
in the light of morning, they were surrounded 
by a party of Indians, were bundled off as 
prisoners of war, and hurried into the presence 
of Brant and Butler, who extracted much useful 
information from them. In the light of this 
information plans were made for an immediate 
attack on the settlement in Cherry Valley. 
The settlers were still unsuspecting, when, 
on the evening of November 10, the enemy 
arrived within a mile of the fort and crept 
to the summit of a hill densely shaded by 



CHERRY VALLEY 79 

evergreens, and hid themselves from sight. 
The snow was fluttering down, but towards 
morning this had changed to a drizzling rain, 
and the air was thick and murky. Groping 
their way forward as silently as possible, 
they stole upon the slumbering cluster of 
habitations. Just as they came near the edge 
of the village, a settler was seen riding in on 
horseback. An Indian fired and wounded 
him. But the man clung to his horse and 
pressed on heroically to sound the alarm. 
Before rushing to the onslaught, the Rangers, 
under the immediate command of Butler, 
paused a moment to see what damage their 
powder had taken through the wet. This 
moment was fatal for the settlement, for the 
Indians now rushed on in advance and sped 
into the doomed village like hounds let slip 
from their leashes. 

The savages were now beyond control, and 
Brant knew that even he could not stay the 
slaughter. Fiercest of all were the Senecas, 
who tomahawked and slew with the relentless 
fury of demons. But the War Chief thought 
of the family of a Mr Wells, whom he knew 
and hoped that he might save. He took a 
short cut for this settler's house, but the way 
lay across a ploughed field, and as he ran the 



8o THE WAR CHIEF 

earth yielded under his feet and he made 
slow progress through the heavy soil. When 
he came to the house, he saw that it was 
already too late. The Senecas and other 
Indians with them had done their work. Not 
one of the inmates had escaped the tomahawk. 

While the attack upon the houses was in 
progress, the Indians made several assaults 
upon the fort, but to no avail. Their work 
of destruction, however, went on unchecked 
among the habitations of the settlers. It was 
not long before flames were mounting in every 
quarter. Butler seemed to have lost all reason, 
and, devoid of pity, he let both white men 
and redskins sate their lust for blood. With 
Brant it was otherwise. In several instances, 
even though second in command, he did acts 
of kindness, and did what he could to check 
the rude violence of his savage band. In one 
house he found a peasant woman working 
calmly at her daily toil. 

' Are you thus engaged,^ he questioned, 
* while all your neighbours are murdered 
around you ? ' 

* We are the king's people,' was the simple 
response. 

* That plea will not avail you to-day,' said 
the chieftain. ' They have murdered Mr 




JOSEPH BRANT 
From a portrait in tlic Indian Dcpartnu-nt. WashinK't"" 



CHERRY VALLEY 8l 

Wells's family, who were as dear to me as my 
own.' 

* But,' replied the woman, * there is one 
Joseph Brant : if he is with the Indians, he 
will save us.' 

' I am Joseph Brant,' came the rapid answer, 
* but I have not the command, and I know not 
that I can save you.' 

No sooner had he done speaking than his 
sharp eye detected a group of Senecas coming 
to the house. ^ Get into bed quick,' he said 
abruptly, * and feign yourself sick.' The 
woman did his bidding, and the Indians when 
they entered were completely deceived by her 
pretence. Then, as they departed, Brant gave 
a piercing signal, and some of his Mohawks 
gathered into the room. He had called them 
to help him save this woman and her family. 
His mark on them would, he believed, make 
them safe even in this time of general slaughter. 
He had no colouring matter with him and he 
asked the Mohawks to use theirs. With deft 
fingers the Indians thf^n placed the chief's 
own mark upon the woman and her children 
in order to protect them. 

' You are now probably safe,' said Brant, 
and moved out again into the smoke of fire and 
battle. 

F 



82 THE WAR CHIEF 

When the massacre was over, it was found 
that thirty or forty settlers had escaped death 
and had been made prisoners. From one of 
these Brant made inquiries respecting the 
whereabouts of Captain M'Kean. He learned 
that this officer had taken his family away to 
the Mohawk valley. 

* He sent me a challenge once/ remarked 
Brant ; * I have now come to accept it. He is 
a fine soldier thus to retreat.* 

' Captain M*Kean/ was the rejoinder, 
* would not turn his back upon an enemy 
where there was a possibility of success.* 

* I know it/ said Brant, with open 
generosity. * He is a brave man, and I would 
have given more to take him than any other 
man in Cherry Valley. But,* he added, ' I 
would not have hurt a hair of his head.* 

On the evening of the day of carnage the 
prisoners were led down the valley to the 
loyalist encampment, several miles to the 
south of the fort. Fires had been lighted on 
every side, and within the extensive range of 
these fires the luckless captives were coralled 
for the night. But the air was chill, and many 
who were clothed in scanty fashion passed 
the hours of darkness in helpless agony on 
the cold, bare ground. During the night the 



CHERRY VALLEY 83 

shrill cries of the Indians, as they gloated over 
the scene of their triumph, resounded through 
the forest. The spoils were divided among the 
raiders, and with the dawning of another day 
they set out in the direction of Niagara. 

The captives were separated into small 
parties, and apportioned among the different 
sections of the force. They had expected 
little mercy from the victors, but to their sur- 
prise clemency was shown to them. This was 
possibly due to the intervention of Brant on 
their behalf. As the marching bands came to 
a standstill, they were collected together and 
the women and children were released. Only 
the wives of two colonial officers with their 
families were held captive and carried away 
into the western forests. In Cherry Valley 
heaps of smoking debris were all that remained. 
Groups of redskins still hovered about the un- 
happy village until, on the following day, they 
saw that an enemy was approaching. A body 
of militia had come from the Mohawk river, 
but they were too late ; the savages, both red 
and white, had departed, and the scene was one 
of havoc and desolation. As one chronicler has 
written : ^ The cocks crowed from the tops of 
the forest trees, and the dogs howled through 
the fields and woods.' 



CHAPTER X 

MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG RIVER 

Brant now proceeded to the loyalist rendezvous 
at Niagara, but his restless spirit would not 
allow him to remain idle. He was soon intent 
on forwarding a design of far-reaching import, 
in the prosecution of which he hoped to receive 
the assistance of the western tribes. He held 
intercourse with the Delawares and the 
Shawnees, and planned a joint campaign with 
them to take place during the winter months. 
The Western Indians were to make an attack 
on the borders of Virginia, while he would lead 
an expedition into the heart of the colony of 
New York. This bold enterprise, however, was 
fated to miscarry. Word came that Governor 
Hamilton, theBritishcommanderofFortDetroit, 
had been overpowered by Colonel George Clarke, 
in February, on the Wabash river. Hamilton, 
who had captured Fort Vincennes there, had for 
some time been endeavouring to interest the 
western tribes in the British cause; but, on 

84 



MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG RIVER 85 

July 5, 1778, Clarke had captured the town 
of Kaskaskia in the Illinois country, and, after 
a forced march from that place to the Wabash 
with his Virginia militia, had appeared at Fort 
Vincennes and compelled Hamilton to sur- 
render. The blow was a severe one and robbed 
the western tribes of their courage ; they were 
so discomfited, indeed, that they would not 
venture into the country of the enemy. 
Balked in his purpose. Brant was forced to 
remain inactive at headquarters. 

During the spring of 1779 the v/hole struggle 
in America was rather bare of events. The 
massacres of Wyoming and Cherry Valley had 
roused the indignation of the Congress of the 
United States, and it had turned its attention 
energetically to the Indian races who were 
opposed to its rule. They must be crushed 
at all hazards. On February 25 Congress had 
voted that means should be taken to bring aid 
to those settlements which had been suffering 
from the Indians. A campaign of vengeance 
into the homeland of the Six Nations was to 
be the crowning effort of the year. This was 
the plan. A numerically strong force was 
to operate under the command of General 
Sullivan. Sullivan was to move up from 
Pennsylvania, and along the Susquehanna until 



86 THE WAR CHIEF 

he reached the Tioga river. At the same time, 
General James CHnton was to advance from 
the north, meeting his brother officer by the 
way. The two divisions should then follow 
the bed of the Chemung river, and sweep 
mercilessly upon the villages of the Senecas 
and Cayugas. 

Clinton was at Canajoharie Castle on June i6. 
With difficulty he crossed the twenty-mile 
portage to Lake Otsego, and by the end of the 
month was able to tell General Sullivan that 
he was ready for the last stage of the journey. 
Sullivan, on the other hand, was making no 
attempt to hasten. He moved forward at a 
leisurely pace, and Clinton grew very im- 
patient at the delay. Even Brant marvelled at 
Sullivan's inaction. The War Chief knew 
only too well that when the two rebel forces met 
the struggle to save the homes of his people 
would be difficult. 

At this juncture the great Mohawk lay with 
a considerable body of warriors at Grassy 
Brook. He had learned that Minisink in the 
Shawangunk Mountains close to the New 
Jersey line was left unguarded, and decided 
to fall upon it. Taking sixty redskins and 
twenty-seven white men apparelled as Indians, 
he advanced so stealthily that his approach was 



MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG RIVER 87 

unnoticed. During the night of July 19 he 
surprised the town, burnt it to the ground, and 
carried off prisoners and booty. 

Orange county, in which Minisink was 
situated, was at once in a state of tumult. 
The local militia flocked together, and were 
eager to follow hard after their daring foe. 
Some thought it more prudent to stay at home, 
but the majority wished immediately to take 
up the chase. The matter was settled when 
Major Meeker sprang on his horse, waved his 
sword, and cried with vehemence : * Let the 
brave men follow me, the cowards may stay 
behind.' With this, the ill-advised settlers 
picked up the trail of the redskins and started 
in pursuit. A body of scouts who were slightly 
in the lead emerged, after various exciting 
adventures, upon the broad hills that skirt the 
Delaware river. Below them they could see 
the Indians twining in and out among the trees. 
The red men were evidently making for a 
shallow place where they might ford the stream. 

To the colonials this seemed a stroke of good 
fortune. They would dash down the hill and 
dispute Brant's passage of the river. Acting on 
the impulse, they swung confidently along, only 
to find themselves outgeneralled. No sooner 
had they sunk from sight in the forest than 



88 THE WAR CHIEF 

Brant had artfully changed his march. He 
slipped through a deep ravine and came out 
on the enemy's rear. Then he chose his own 
position for an ambush. The Orange county 
men, looking high and low for the Indians, 
at length came to a halt, when to their dismay 
they found that the enemy were posted in an 
unlooked-for quarter. There, in concealment 
behind them, lay Brant's force. The War 
Chief now issued from among his redskins, 
and made overtures to the opposing force. 
He advised them to surrender without offering 
resistance ; if they did so he would see that 
no harm befell them. Should the battle begin, 
he added, he might be unable to restrain his 
followers. The only answer which came was 
a hurtling bullet that clipped a hole through 
the covering of his belt. In an instant Brant 
had faced about and disappeared under cover. 
Straightway the enemy bore down at break- 
neck speed upon the tree-sheltered lair of the 
Indians. In wading through a narrow brook 
that obstructed their advance, their ranks 
became disordered, and Brant made effective 
use of the situation. His voice rose in a war- 
whoop and his warriors sprang into motion. 
After delivering one sharp, destructive volley, 
they seized their tomahawks and surged into 



MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG RIVER 89 

the midst of their foe. From an hour before 
noon until sundown, sheltered by trees and 
rocks, both sides fought stubbornly. At last 
the whites gave way, and the battle closed with 
appalling slaughter. Of the retreating remnant 
thirty survived, while the bodies of many of 
their comrades were left upon the field of 
battle. Of those who sought safety by swim- 
ming the Delaware, a number were killed 
by their ruthless foe, who pitilessly fired upon 
them as they struggled towards the opposite 
bank. 

After the fight, as Brant traversed the blood- 
stained field he bent over the wounded form of 
Gabriel Wisner, who was a magistrate of 
Orange county. The fallen man, though 
suffering excruciating pain, was still able to 
speak, but the chieftain saw that he was dying. 
There were wolves in the forest, and these would 
soon visit the scene of carnage. To bear 
Wisner from the field would avail nothing. 
For a moment the War Chief debated what he 
should do. Then, turning the attention of the 
wounded man in another direction, he poised 
his hatchet. In a flash it had smitten the skull 
of the dying magistrate and his misery was at 
an end. In this act as in others Brant showed 
that his contact with civilization had not freed 



90 THE WAR CHIEF 

him from the basic instincts of his savage 
nature. Few white men could have performed 
such a deed even on the field of battle with so 
much calmness. 

Brant now returned to the border country 
and, together with Sir John Johnson, drew up 
a plan of defence. It was resolved that they 
should fortify a position on the Chemung river, 
to resist the advance of the Americans into the 
Indian country. The place selected was not 
far from the village of Newtown. A breast- 
work was built, half a mile in length, and this 
was protected on one side by the river and on 
the other by two stretches of elevated ground. 
Upon these ridges battalions were placed. 
But the defenders were able to muster only 
a comparatively small force, vastly inferior to 
the foe in numbers. In all, the garrison con- 
sisted of about eight hundred men, two-thirds 
of whom were Indians. 

It was barely four weeks after the battle 
on the Delaware that Generals Sullivan and 
Clinton joined forces at Tioga. They had a 
very powerful army, consisting altogether of 
some five thousand men, including a strong 
brigade of experienced riflemen and an artillery 
corps with a number of heavy guns. They had 
sent out corps of light infantry in advance and 



MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG RIVER 91 

were now moving slowly against the defences 
occupied by the king's forces. 

The War Chief was in charge of the Indians, 
and despite the strength of the opposing force 
he had resolved to make a determined stand. 
As the foe came on, he sent out his men in 
small parties from the works to annoy them and 
retard their advance. The Indians attacked 
the invaders after the manner of bush-fighters, 
firing and then seeking cover while they re- 
loaded their muskets. The conflict that ensued 
was desperate beyond description. Every bit 
of cover — bush, tree, or boulder— held its 
man. With dogged valour the savages stood 
their ground, till driven back by the very 
impetus of the onset. The enemy were massed 
deep in front and but little impression could 
be made on their compact ranks. More dis- 
tressing still, the Americans had brought their 
heavy artillery into play, and it began to 
thunder against the defences. On this day 
Brant was an inspiring figure to his thin 
line of warriors. His resolute countenance 
gave them hope ; his resonant voice rang out 
strong and clear amid the clamour and spurred 
them to resist. Wherever the fight was fiercest 
he made his way, issuing his orders with care, 
speaking words of cheer, and, in the face of 



92 THE WAR CHIEF 

death, striving to stem the current of certain 
defeat. 

Meanwhile General Sullivan had caught 
sight of the troops that infested the rising 
ground. A detachment was immediately told 
off under Major Poor with orders to storm the 
slopes and drive the defenders from their 
position. The War Chief grasped the situation 
in an instant. In a last attempt to save the 
day, he rallied his warriors and, with the aid of 
a battalion of Rangers, threw himself with re- 
newed energy into the struggle. But though 
Brant hurried from place to place with the 
utmost energy, it soon became evident that the 
day was lost. The Americans climbed the ascent 
and, in the teeth of a brave opposition, turned 
the loyalists' flank. The troops of the enemy 
began to fold about the garrison. 

' Oonah ! Oonah ! ' The savages* doleful cry 
of retreat vibrated upon the air. Moving towards 
the stream, redskins and white men crossed it 
together in headlong flight. It was an Indian 
custom to carry the dead from the field of battle, 
but on this occasion so precipitate was their 
retreat that eleven corpses were left to lie where 
they had fallen in the struggle. Sullivan and his 
army had undisputed possession of the field. 
To Brant and to the men of the Six Nations 



MINISINK AND THE CHEMUNG RIVER 93 

this was a day of grief and disaster. The gates 
of their country were thrown open ; their 
villages were left undefended ; there was 
nothing to prevent the ravager from treading 
down and plundering the fair land of their 
fathers, the pride of a noble race, the gift of 
the centuries. But in the light of the massacres 
of Wyoming and Cherry Valley it must be said 
that their fate was not undeserved. 

As General Sullivan advanced, burning and 
devastating, he came at length into the valley 
of the Genesee. This he made ' a scene of 
drear and sickening desolation. The Indians 
were hunted like wild beasts, till neither house 
nor fruit-tree, nor field of corn, nor in- 
habitant, remained in the whole country.' 
One hundred and twenty-eight houses were 
razed in the town of Genesee. Sullivan became 
known to the Indians as the ' Town Destroyer.' 
* And to this day,' said Cornplanter, in a speech 
delivered many years afterwards, ' when the 
name is heard, our women look behind them 
and turn pale and our children cling close to 
the necks of their mothers.* 

The War Chief had, indeed, been beaten on 
the Chemung river. And yet, in the hour of 
defeat, he had added lustre to his name. In the 
annals of the forest there are few incidents as 



94 THE WAR CHIEF 

glorious as this Spartan-like struggle on the 
frontiers of the Indian country. Points of 
similarity can be traced between this battle and 
another which was waged, in 1 8 13, by the great 
Shawnee warrior Tecumseh, at Moravian 
Town, on the Canadian Thames. Like Brant, 
Tecumseh was allied with a force of white 
men, and, like the chief of the Mohawks in 
the struggle on the Chemung, Tecumseh played 
the leading role in the battle of the Thames. 
In each engagement the fight was against an 
army much stronger in numbers ; in each the 
defeat was not without honour to the Indian 
leaden 



CHAPTER XI 

OVER THE BORDER 

Instead of proceeding to attack the strong 
loyalist fort at Niagara, General Sullivan re- 
crossed the Genesee on September i6. Lack 
of provisions, he asserted, was his reason for 
turning back. Before this. Brant had frus- 
trated a plot which was afoot among the 
Indians to desert the British cause. Red Jacket, 
an influential chief of the Senecas and a very 
persuasive orator, had suggested that the Six 
Nations should negotiate a permanent peace 
with the colonists. * What have the English 
done for us,' he exclaimed, as he pointed in the 
direction of the Mohawk valley, ' that we 
should become homeless and helpless for their 
sakes ? ' A considerable following embraced 
the view of the Seneca chieftain, and it was 
agreed that a runner should be sent to the camp 
of General Sullivan to acquaint him with their 
desire to come to terms. If Sullivan was 
prepared to negotiate with them, he was to be 



96 THE WAR CHIEF 

asked to send his proposals under a flag of 
truce. These proceedings came to Brant's know- 
ledge and, whether his act may be justified or 
not, he adopted probably the only means of 
preventing a wholesale desertion to the enemy. 
He chose two of his trustiest warriors and gave 
them instructions to waylay the bearers of the 
flag of truce from Sullivan's camp. The bearers 
were killed and the proposals of the American 
commander fell into Brant's hands, and Red 
Jacket and his party were left to imagine that 
Sullivan had not been gracious enough even to 
send them an answer. 

Not long after the rout of the Six Nations on 
the Chemung river and the destruction of their 
villages the snow had begun to fall. The winter 
of 1779-80 was an unusually severe one, and 
the Indians suffered untold hardships through 
famine and disease. They were driven to 
trek in great numbers to the vicinity of the 
English fort at Niagara. Brant was there at 
this time, and during his sojourn he saw a 
wedding performed according to the sacred 
rites of the Anglican Church. He had lost his 
first wife, the mother of Isaac and Christiana, 
and had married her half-sister, Susanna ; but 
she also had died childless, and Brant had taken 
to his tent the daughter of a Mohawk chief, 




1 







^f^: 



KKlJ JACKi. 1 
After a painliiii^ by K. W. Weir 



OVER THE BORDER 97 

whom he now decided to wed after the manner 
of the white people. His third bride, who was 
about twenty-one years of age at the time of 
her marriage, is known in history as Catherine 
Brant. She bore Brant three sons and four 
daughters, and Hved for some years after his 
death. Her father was the leading sachem of 
the Tortoise clan and consequently she was able 
to bestow high rank within the Mohawk nation 
upon her son, Ahyouwaighs, or John Brant. 

The story of Brant's part in the War of the 
Revolution from this time on can be related 
very briefly. Before spring he was again on 
the war-path and helped to destroy the villages 
of the Oneidas, because of their active sympathy 
for the rebel cause. In the month of April he 
closed in upon the settlement of Harpersfield 
and levelled it to the ground. As he was mak- 
ing his way back from the last adventure, he 
was seized with fever and forced to move by 
slow stages. He allowed his warriors to travel 
only every other day. There is an anecdote 
telling how he cured himself of his malady in a 
very Indian-like manner. Taking his position 
on the side of a hill, a haunt of rattlesnakes, 
he waited till one should crawl out to bask in 
the sun. When at length a snake showed itself 
he seized it and bore it to his camp. This 



98 THE WAR CHIEF 

reptile was cooked in a broth, and Brant 
supped eagerly of the hot decoction. And after 
partaking of this wonderful remedy, according 
to the story, he was well again in a very short 
time. 

In August of the same year, 1780, Brant 
again invaded the Mohawk valley. On this 
occasion he gained his object by an artful 
device. He learned that some stores were 
being borne to Fort Schuyler and pre- 
tended that he was going to seize them and 
attack the fort itself. The local militia 
marched to the fort's defence and, while they 
were intent on this, Brant doubled back to 
the rear. Swooping down upon the white 
settlement at Canajoharie, he laid everything 
low and carried away captive many women 
and children. Later in the season he made 
a similar descent into the Schoharie-kill, but 
here there is on record to his credit at least 
one act of kindness. After the raid, a group of 
settlers were gathered together, telling of all 
the mishaps that had occurred to them. One 
sad-eyed woman told of the loss of her husband 
and several of her children. She had been 
bereft even of an infant, which had been torn 
from its cradle. But that morning, while the 
officers of the colonial camp were seated at 



OVER THE BORDER 99 

their breakfast, a painted redskin sprang into 
their midst carrying in his arms a slender child 
and handed a letter to the officer in command. 
It was the woman's child that he bore, and the 
letter was from Joseph Brant. 

' Sir,* ran the epistle, ' I send you by one of 
my runners the child which he will deliver, that 
you may know that whatever others do, I do 
not make war upon women and children. I 
am sorry to say that I have those engaged with 
me in the service who are more savage than 
the savages themselves/ 

The year 1781 brought the war to its climax. 
On October 19 Lord Cornwallis, hard pressed at 
Yorktown by an army of sixteen thousand men 
under Washington and a powerful French fleet 
under Admiral de Grasse, was forced to sur- 
render. This was the last important episode 
before peace was arranged. During the summer 
the War Chief had still been fighting on the 
border and harassing the country of those who 
sympathized with the Americans. In August 
he was found in the west, having defeated a 
part of Colonel Clarke's forces near the Great 
Miami river, which empties into Lake Erie. 

The treaty of peace between Great Britain 
and the United States of America was signed 
in November 1782. Canada, Newfoundland, 



100 THE WAR CHIEF 

and what are now the Maritime Provinces of 
the Dominion remained in the hands of the 
crown, but the independence of the other 
Enghsh colonies in the New World was re- 
cognized. In the whole text of the treaty 
there was not a word about the Six Nations. 
But all their lands south of Lake Ontario as 
far as the banks of the Hudson came into 
the possession of the United States. For some 
time it seemed as though the Indians' sacrifices 
on behalf of His Majesty the King were to be 
reckoned as nothing, and the tribesmen who 
had been loyal were very wroth. They had 
fought valiantly for the crown, and now ex- 
pected that the king should do something for 
them in return. All that they had to fall back 
upon was the promise that their rights would 
be respected when the conflict ended. 

* Now is the time for you to help the King,' 
General Haldimand had said to the assembled 
redskins in 1775. * The war has commenced. 
Assist the King now, and you will find it to 
your advantage. Go now and fight for your 
possessions, and, whatever you lose of your 
property during the war, the King will make 
up to you when peace returns.' 

Sir Guy Carleton had also assured the Indians 
that money would be spent to give them the 



OVER THE BORDER loi 

same position after the war that they had 
occupied before it, and that the government 
would not be lax in dealing with their needs. 
In 1779, when General Haldimand was already 
in command of all the forces in Canada, he 
had reiterated his promises, and said that he 
would do his best to fulfil them, 'as soon as that 
happy time [the restoration of peace] should 
come/ 

When the war was ended most of the 
Mohawk nation were dwelling on the west 
bank of the Niagara river. They had pitched 
their wigwams close to the landing-place, now 
Lewiston, which was some miles above the fort. 
Their old territory was situated in the heart of 
the country of their conquerors and to this 
they could not return with safety. The 
Senecas, who lived near by, saw how sad was 
their plight and offered them land upon which 
they might reside. The Mohawks appreciated 
the kindness of this proposal of the warlike 
nation which had fought by their side in the 
long struggle, but they could not accept the 
offer. In the words of Brant himself, they 
were resolved to ' sink or swim * with the 
English. 

To settle the matter the War Chief journeyed 
down the St Lawrence to confer with the 



102 THE WAR CHIEF 

Canadian leaders. At Quebec he met General 
Haldimand and was welcomed by this officer 
with the sincerest friendship and given a 
chance to discuss the unhappy lot of his home- 
less people. Haldimand said that he would be 
quite ready to fulfil the promises that he had 
made during the war. Brant replied that his 
tribesmen would like to settle on English ground, 
and named the region on the Bay of Quinte as a 
spot suited to their needs. These lands were 
especially fertile and beautiful, and Haldimand 
was quite willing that the grant should be made 
in accordance with their wishes. He said 
that a tract would soon be purchased and given 
to the warriors of the Six Nations. Brant must 
have been well accompanied on his journey to 
the east, since on his way back twenty Indian 
families turned aside and pitched their abodes 
in the territory allotted to them on the Bay of 
Quinte. They were ruled by an Indian named 
Captain John, and a thriving Mohawk settle- 
ment was thus begun. Brant continued his 
journey along the south side of Lake Ontario, 
and came once again to Niagara. 

But when the War Chief told the waiting 
redskins of his negotiations with General 
Haldimand there was a great outcry of dis- 
satisfaction. The Senecas, who were the chief 



OVER THE BORDER 103 

objectors, stated that they could not allow their 
kinsmen and old comrades-in-arms to go so 
far away from them as the Bay of Quints. 
The Senecas were still afraid that they might 
have difficulties with the people of the United 
States, in whose country they were dwelling. 
The Mohawks must be near at hand to come 
to their rescue should the hatchet again be 
upraised. 

Brant felt very keenly for the Senecas, who 
had done him such yeoman service in the war. 
They could be cruel in combat, but were very 
loyal to their friends, and he knew that some- 
thing must be done for them. Accordingly, he 
repaired a second time to Quebec and again 
discussed the situation with General Haldimand. 
The outcome was that he obtained another 
grant of land, on the Grand river, which runs 
with a southerly course into the waters of Lake 
Erie. A tract six miles wide on each side of 
this stream, extending from its source to its 
mouth, was allotted to the Six Nations. This 
beautiful district, bordering on the shore of 
Lake Erie, only forty miles from the outer fringe 
of the Seneca villages, was in a direct line of 
intercourse between the Six Nations and the 
many tribes of the west and the upper lakes. 
Brant obtained the title-deeds to this territory 



104 THE WAR CHIEF 

for the Indians in the autumn of 1784, under 
the seal of royal authority. It was a gift, as 
indicated by the terms of the award, * which the 
Mohawks and others of the Six Nations . . . 
with their posterity,' were to enjoy for ever. 

Having been provided with a new home, the 
band of copper-hued patriots now began to 
cross the Niagara. They were loyalists of 
another than the white race, and, like the 
other Loyalists, they had left their Long Houses 
behind in the hands of the stranger. On their 
bodies were the marks and scars of many a 
campaign ; their limbs had become suppler 
with the long march and swarthier in the 
summer sun ; they did not dare to cast a 
glance back at the fair land that had been the 
hunting-ground of their fathers. With them 
were their women, dark-eyed Amazons of the 
north. Their little ones toddled by their side. 
The journey was shortly over and they beheld 
the waters of the Grand river, flowing between 
their narrow banks. Here, in the flowering 
glades, they raised their tents and lit anew 
their council fires. Then they toiled up against 
the current, searching out the borders of their 
country; down-stream they shot again, their 
glad eyes beaming as they saw how wide and 
goodly was their heritage. 



OVER THE BORDER 105 

The nation of the Mohawks had come to 
Canada to stay. Among them settled many 
from their kindred tribes, red men who would 
not forsake their Great White Father the King. 
By the sheltering boughs of the regal maple, 
the silver-garbed beech, or the drooping willow 
they built the rough huts of a forest people. 
Then they tilled the soil, and learned to love 
their new abode. Although of a ferocious 
stock, unrivalled in the arts of savage warfare, 
the Mohawks and other Indians of the Six 
Nations in Canada have rarely, if ever, been 
surpassed by any other red men in the ways 
of peace. 



CHAPTER XII 

ENGLAND ONCE MORE 

Meanwhile, how was it faring with the tribes- 
men of the Six Nations who had remained in 
their former territories east of the Niagara? 
They were anxious to come to terms with the 
government of the United States, but not by 
themselves alone. In any treaty which might 
be made, they wished the concurrence of 
the western tribes. The officials of the new 
republic were, however, opposed to this and 
treated their desire with scant courtesy. In 
1784 a conference was called at Fort Stanwix, 
but the western tribes were not invited to come. 
While this was taking place. Red Jacket, 
the Seneca orator, rose in the company of his 
fellows and uttered a speech burning with elo- 
quence. His attitude towards the Americans 
had undergone a change since Brant had 
undone his treachery before the war had 
closed. The Six Nations should renew the 

contest, said Red Jacket. Never should they 

10c 



ENGLAND ONCE MORE 107 

submit to the yoke of their oppressors. On the 
other hand, Chief Cornplanter, with sounder 
judgment, argued for peace. It would surely 
be an unwise thing for the Indians to enter 
upon a fresh war single-handed, and without 
the assistance of their former allies, the 
English. 

At length Cornplanter had his way, and on 
October 22 a treaty was made with the re- 
presentatives of the United States. By this 
treaty the Indians were to give up all the 
prisoners of war still in their hands. Until 
this was done, six hostages were to be furnished 
from among their number. At the same time, 
the boundaries of the country over which they 
held sway were defined. 

Loud murmurs of complaint arose within 
the Six Nations on the completion of this pact, 
and no one was more angry than Joseph Brant 
himself. He was at Quebec, on the point of 
leaving for England, but he hurried back on 
learning the terms of the treaty. He was 
especially exasperated because Aaron Hill, one 
of the lesser chiefs of the Mohawks, was to be 
given up as a hostage. Arriving at Cataraqui, 
Brant, on November 27, sent a long and stirring 
letter to Colonel Munroe. In this he showed 
that his Indians were in no way to blame for 



io8 THE WAR CHIEF 

the retention of prisoners of war. The fight 
was over, and the Six Nations wanted harmony 
restored. With considerable feeling, he re- 
ferred to the * customs and manners of the 
Mohawks.' * They are always active and 
true,' he protested ; ' no double faces at war, 
or any other business.' 

The difficulty was quickly righted and the 
War Chief satisfied, but he saw that all the 
Indian races were in a precarious position 
and might, sooner or later, be drawn into 
hostilities. Meanwhile he was meditating a 
scheme which might be likened to the bold 
conception of Pontiac. In vision he saw all 
the Indian tribes united into one far-reaching 
confederacy for the assertion of their liberties. 
Brant was of a singularly ambitious disposition 
and had no humble idea of his own capacities. 
He pictured himself as the chosen head of such 
a vast league of the native races. It was with 
this in view that at this very time he paid a 
visit to the western tribes and sought to ascer- 
tain their ideas upon the subject. 

At the close of 1785 Brant was ready to 
make his second journey across the Atlantic. 
It was indeed fitting, after his years of active 
service for the crown, that he should do homage 
once more at the English court. He desired. 



ENGLAND ONCE MORE 109 

also, to plead the cause of his Mohawks, who 
had lost so much in the struggle. It is even 
likely that he was pondering over his design 
of uniting all the tribes and wished to disclose 
this scheme to the home authorities. A strik- 
ing sketch of the War Chief's appearance 
during this period is given by the Baroness 
Riedesel. This talented lady, who had met 
the Mohawk chief at Quebec, was the wife of 
the noted general who led a troop of Hessians 
in the War of the Revolution. 

* I saw at this time,' she writes, ' the famous 
Indian Chief, Captain Brant. His manners 
are polished : he expressed himself with 
fluency, and was much esteemed by General 
Haldimand.* The strenuous scenes through 
which Brant had lived, indeed, seem to have 
left but little impression on his face. * I dined 
once with him at the General's,' continued the 
baroness. * In his dress he showed off to 
advantage the half military and half savage 
costume. His countenance was manly and 
intelligent, and his disposition very mild.' 

On his arrival in London for the second 
time, Brant received a welcome even exceeding 
that which was given him on his first visit. 
He was lauded as king of the red men and lord 
of the boundless forest. In the houses of the 



no THE WAR CHIEF 

most illustrious people in the realm he was 
given a place of high honour. One of those 
who took delight in Brant's company was Lord 
Percy, heir to the dukedom of Northumberland. 
Lord Percy had served in America and had been 
adopted, according to Indian custom, into one 
of the tribes of the Six Nations, and was called 
in its language the Evergreen Brake. Charles 
James Fox, the statesman, was also among 
the admirers of the War Chief. Fox caused a 
beautiful silver snuff-box to be sent to Brant, 
engraved with his initials. The Prince of 
Wales was attracted by the chieftain and took 
Brant with him on many of his jaunts about 
the capital. Brant was amazed at some of 
the places to which his royal conductor re- 
sorted. At the royal palace he was warmly 
greeted by King George and Queen Charlotte 
and held in high esteem. 

His official visit to their Majesties was 
marked by a somewhat uncommon incident. 
As a dutiful subject, it was in keeping with 
tradition that he should kiss the king's hand, 
but this he refused to do. The War Chief 
could not bend, even before the greatest of 
potentates. Turning to the queen, however, 
after the fashion of a cavalier. Brant said that 
he would be only too pleased to kiss her hand. 



ENGLAND ONCE MORE m 

George III did not seem in the least annoyed. 
He appeared rather to be delighted at this 
courtesy shown his queen, and so the affair 
passed happily. 

One humorous episode which happened 
during Brant's stay in London caused quite a 
sensation. Through the good graces of Earl 
Moira, he was invited to attend a masquerade 
ball in Mayfair. It was to be a festive event, 
and people of distinguished rank were ex- 
pected to be present. Brant did not go to 
any pains to deck himself out artfully for 
the occasion, but was attired only in the 
costume of his tribe. To change his appear- 
ance, he painted a portion of his face, and 
arrived in this guise at the place of entertain- 
ment. As he entered the gay ball-room, his 
lofty plumage swayed grandly and a glittering 
tomahawk shone from his girdle. The scene 
that met his eyes was resplendent with life 
and beauty. Masked figures were flitting by, 
clad in every imaginable garb. Here was a 
sleek-faced friar, rotund and merry ; there, a 
gypsy maid, or mild-eyed shepherdess with her 
stave. Lonely hermits and whimsical jesters, 
cackling witches, and members of a pilgrim 
band — all thronged together with laugh or 
grimace, adding their own peculiar lustre to 



112 THE WAR CHIEF 

the brilliant assembly. By and by a Turk came 
strolling down the floor ; he was a diplomat of 
high degree, and two nymphs from the paradise 
of Islam hovered near at hand. Suddenly the 
Turk caught sight of the painted features of 
the sturdy redskin. He stopped, and fixed 
the Indian with his gaze. Here, he thought, 
was the chance for a bit of frolic. In a moment 
he had lost his stately demeanour and lurched 
jocularly towards the warrior. He reached 
for the Indian's face, thinking it was screened 
with parchment. The next instant he had 
tweaked the nose of the great chief of the Six 
Nations. Above the confusing medley of 
sounds burst the wild accents of the blood- 
freezing war-whoop. On the instant Brant's 
tomahawk was forth from his girdle, and was 
whirling about the head of the astonished 
offender. Never had such a cry been heard 
within the halls of fashion. Faces turned 
ashen pale and screams resounded through the 
spacious mansion. Helter-skelter, in every 
direction, fled the terrified masqueraders. The 
Moslem thought that his last hour on earth 
had come. Then Brant's arm fell ; his tense 
features relaxed, and he had become once more 
the genial ' Captain of the Mohawks.* Accord- 
ing to his own declaration, which may or may 



ENGLAND ONCE MORE 113 

not have been exactly true, he only intended 
a playful contribution to the pleasures of the 
evening. The Turk was calmed, and the 
frightened company came slowly streaming 
back. Everything was explained and Brant 
became a greater hero than ever before. Yet 
it is hardly likely that the pompous follower of 
Islam ever forgot the lively scene which his 
rashness had produced. 

Notwithstanding the gay round of enter- 
tainment in which he joined, Brant had been 
attending to the business matters that had 
brought him to England. He had sent a letter 
relative to the affairs of the Six Nations to 
Lord Sydney, the secretary of state for Colonial 
Affairs, and he delivered a speech upon the 
same topic in Sydney's presence. He told him 
of the losses sustained by the Indians, and 
hoped that a speedy settlement would be made 
with them by the British government. * On 
my mentioning these matters, since my arrival 
in England,' wrote Brant, * I am informed that 
orders are given that this shall be done ; which 
will give great relief and satisfaction to those 
faithful Indians, who will have spirit to go on, 
and their hearts [will] be filled with gratitude 
for the King, their father's, kindness.' 

Just before leaving for America, Brant 

H 



114 THE WAR CHIEF 

received a letter from Lord Sydney saying that 
King George desired that the red men should 
receive justice. * His Majesty,' said Sydney, 
* in consideration of the zealous and hearty 
exertions of his Indian allies in the support of 
his cause, and as a proof of his friendly dis- 
position toward them, has been graciously 
pleased to consent that the losses already 
certified by the Superintendent-General shall 
be made good/ 



CHAPTER XIII 

STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 

When Brant appeared again in the open 
councils of his people, he found the red men 
still in a fretful mood. The Treaty of Fort 
Stanwix was a source of constant aggravation 
to them. The white settlers were pressing 
over their frontiers so boldly that the Indians 
felt that their lands must sooner or later slip 
from their grasp. England feared an out- 
break of war, and the Indians believed that in 
such a case she would aid them. A proof of 
this was the manner in which she was keeping 
garrisons in the western posts which she had 
agreed to surrender. It was claimed that 
this was done because the United States had 
failed to live up to its pledges. Be that as it 
may, Joseph Brant was expected in case of 
hostilities to organize the strong league of 
native races that he had planned to form. 

In November 1786 a great council of Indian 
tribes was held at Huron Village, on the 



ii6 THE WAR CHIEF 

Detroit river. This was well attended, and 
its deliberations were very grave. An address, 
probably written by Brant, was sent by order 
of the assembled Indians to the Congress of the 
United States. Peace was desired, but it 
would be necessary for the Congressional re- 
presentatives to treat with the redskins as a 
whole ; difficulties had been engendered be- 
cause the United States had entered into 
negotiations with separate tribes — ' kindled 
council-fires wherever it saw fit ' — without 
ever deigning to consult the Indians as a whole ; 
this, affirmed the address, must happen no 
longer. 

During the next few years the War Chief 
was unsparing in his efforts to come to some 
solution of the problem which the attitude of 
the United States had presented. He was 
quite aware that there was not enough con- 
certed action among the various tribes. In his 
efforts to unite them he was aided and supported 
in all that he did by the English officials. But, 
try as Brant might, it seemed impossible to 
arrive at that wide union among the tribes at 
which he was aiming. On every hand were 
differences of opinion and petty jealousies. In 
1789 General St Clair, indeed, was able to make 
two separate treaties with the Indians, much 



STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 117 

to the delight of the government at Philadelphia. 

* I am persuaded,' St Clair wrote confidently, 

* [that] their general confederacy is entirely 
broken. Indeed it would not be very difficult, 
if circumstances required it, to set them at 
deadly variance.' 

But though unwilling to unite, it was with 
jealous and angry eyes that they watched the 
white men cross the Ohio. The year 1790 
found the western tribes ablaze with passion 
and again on the war-path against the United 
States. The Shawnees, Potawatomis, and 
Miamis were the leaders of the revolt. An 
expedition under General Harmar marched 
against them, but it was defeated with great 
loss. The Six Nations were the next in arms, 
and fell without mercy on the settlements by 
the Alleghany river. 

The horizon was now dark and it seemed as 
though a widespread struggle with the Indians 
was certain to occur. While the British 
authorities trusted implicitly in Joseph Brant, 
the executive of the United States was also 
trying to win his confidence. Both sides 
clearly recognized that the future of the red 
men depended largely on the policy that Brant 
should adopt. To have two great nations each 
striving to enlist one's services is a fair indica- 



ii8 THE WAR CHIEF 

tion that the possession of those services will 
give either nation a distinct advantage. Brant 
did not lack vanity, and on this occasion he 
was more than flattered. But, to do justice 
to Brant, it must be admitted that all the time 
he had been in favour of peace. He did not 
wish the tribes to go madly into an unequal 
contest when there was very slight hope of 
success, and yet he was strongly of the opinion 
that his people must not bow too readily 
to the avarice of the pale-face. The Ohio 
river should be the dividing-line between the 
Indian territories in the west and those of 
the republic, and by this they must stand or 
fall. 

The government of the United States at 
length concluded that neither Brant nor the 
tribes would listen to its terms and that war 
was inevitable. It determined to carry the fight 
vigorously into the very strongholds of the 
western tribes. General St Clair was chosen 
for this purpose, and he was given a large force 
to deal with a certain unrest which had de- 
veloped in the country of the Miamis. What 
the War Chief had feared was now about to 
happen. His hatchet was dull and rusted, 
and he had grown unused to the strain and 
hazard of the war-path. But could he hold 



STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 119 

aloof ? The ' Long Knives ' were moving 
against the lodges of his brethren in the west, 
and so he bent his ear once more to hear the 
warrior's call. 

St Clair set out from Fort Washington in 
September 1791 and proceeded in the direction 
of the Miami villages, to the south-west of 
Lake Erie. As he advanced, he found himself 
worried by bands of redskins who hung upon 
his line of march. By November 3, however, 
he had come within fifteen miles of the Indian 
villages. When he pitched his camp, his army 
of militiamen and regulars numbered about 
fourteen hundred men all told. The Indians 
were also fairly numerous, and were under the 
guidance of Little Turtle, a brave chief of the 
Miamis. Though drawn from various nations, 
their hearts were knit together by the peril 
which confronted them. Within their ranks 
were a hundred and fifty stalwarts of the 
Mohawk tribe, as well as a number of white 
men and half-breeds from Canada, who had 
come to their assistance. 

When the fight began the Mohawks were 
seen to do the bidding of a tall and agile 
chieftain. Though Little Turtle was the 
nominal leader, it is conceded that the main 
antagonist whom St Clair had pitted against 



120 THE WAR CHIEF 

him in this engagement was Joseph Brant. 
Having sent his militiamen on in advance, 
the American general had bivouacked with the 
regulars by the side of a small stream, which 
ran into the Wabash. Just befc'^ daybreak 
on November 4, the raw militiamen found 
themselves suddenly attacked by a force of 
redskins. The Americans, who were about 
a quarter of a mile from the principal camp, 
turned and fled in confusion. This was what 
the Indians desired. So hotly did the militia- 
men retreat towards the camp that St Clair*s 
main force was almost carried off its feet. A 
rally was made, but the Indians dashed for- 
ward with swiftness and daring. Following 
on the heels of the fleeing militiamen, they 
were soon at the very edge of the encampment. 
There they began to pick off the American 
gunners one by one. 

In a short time St Claires invading army was 
hemmed in on every side and many of his 
officers had fallen. Charge after charge was 
made by his men, but all to no avail. At 
length he saw that the day was lost and gave 
orders for retreat, hoping to save what was left 
of his force. A weak spot was found in the 
redskins* line, and a remnant of St Clair's proud 
army went free, scurrying off in wild precipita- 



STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 121 

tion to Fort Jefferson, thirty miles away. The 
ground was thickly strewn with their dead. 
It has been computed that in this battle eight 
hundred of St Clair's force were killed or 
wounded. . 

This disaster in the country of the Miamis 
showed the United States how hard it would 
be to break the spirit of the red men. War 
having effected nothing, it was again decided 
to resort to entreaty. A number of chiefs of 
different tribes were invited to go to Phila- 
delphia, anv, among them was Captain Brant. 
* I can assure you,* wrote the secretary of 
state in the federal government to Brant on 
February 2, 1792, * that the President of the 
United States will be highly gratified by re- 
ceiving and conversing with a chief of such 
eminence as you are, on a subject so interest- 
ing and important to the human race.* After 
some persuasion Brant consented to go and, 
proceeding on horseback by way of the Mohawk 
valley, he arrived at the capital city on June 20. 
There he was gladly welcomed, and every effort 
was made to win him for the United States. ' I 
was offered a thousand guineas down,' wrote 
the War Chief at a later time, ' and to have 
the half-pay and pension I receive from Great 
Britain doubled, merely on condition tliat I 



122 THE WAR CHIEF 

would use my endeavours to bring about a 
peace. But this I rejected/ The American 
authorities then held out an even more tempt- 
ing bait. They would give him pre-emption 
rights over land estimated to be worth twenty 
thousand pounds and an annual allowance of 
fifteen hundred dollars. But Brant stead- 
fastly refused, and his reason was very plain. 
How could he accept such a bribe ? * They 
might expect me/ he said, ' to act contrary to 
His Majesty's interest and the honour of our 
nations.' He did, however, promise that he 
would urge the Miamis to come to terms with 
the United States, and that he would go to them 
for that purpose. 

As he was on his way home from Phila- 
delphia he found that a Dutch-American, 
named Dygert, was pursuing him with the 
intention of making an attempt upon his life. 
In New York, while he was talking to several 
officers at his lodgings in Broadway, he 
happened to peer out, and saw a man in the 
street below with his eyes intently fixed on the 
window of his room. 

* There is Dygert now,' he cried. 

Colonel Willet, one of the officers, went 
down and accused the man of basely plotting 
Brant's assassination. 



STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 123 

^ * Do you know/ said the colonel, * that if you 
kill that savage, you will be hanged ? ' 

' Who,' said Dygert in surprise, ' would 
hang me for killing an Indian ? ' 

' You will see,' answered Willet ; ' if you 
execute your purpose, you may depend upon 
it that you will be hanged up immediately.' 

At this the would-be criminal went off and 
did not trouble the War Chief any more. 

On his safe return to Canada Brant was taken 
ill and was not able to attend a grand council 
held in the autumn at Au Glaize, on the Great 
Miami. When the council met it was agreed 
that hostilities should be suspended until a fresh 
council should be held at Miami Rapids. 

During the winter of 1792-93 Brant re- 
ceived a visit from Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe 
of Upper Canada at his home on Grand River. 
This officer, who had lately been installed 
at Niagara, carried a letter to the War Chief 
from his old friend Lord Percy, now the Duke 
of Northumberland, together with a brace 
of pistols that the duke had sent to him. 
Simcoe was on his way to Detroit by sled, and 
stopped for three days at the Mohawk village. 
A feu de joie was fired in his honour, flags 
were hoisted, and the Indians made a display 
of their trophies of war. 



124 THE WAR CHIEF 

Brant and some of the redskins accompanied 
the lieutenant-governor as far as the Thames 
river, where was situated the village of the 
Delawares. Here the War Chief was forced 
to return. Soon afterwards His Excellency 
again halted at Grand River on his way back. 
The Indians entertained him in royal style, 
performing the calumet dance, the feather 
dance, and several other dances of their tribe. 

In the middle of the summer of 1793 a great 
assembly of Indians took place at Miami 
Rapids. Commissioners who were sent to 
represent the United States were not allowed 
to approach the place of meeting. Brant made 
three speeches, urging upon the Indians the 
advisability of peace. But the red men were 
still headstrong, and the commissioners had 
to go away without having reached any under- 
standing with them. 

The end of the struggle, however, was com- 
ing fast. In 1794 General Wayne marched 
to the neighbourhood of Fort Miami with a 
numerous force, defeated the Indians at the 
Fallen Timbers, and drove them before him 
in all directions. Crestfallen and heartsore, 
they saw that the day of the white man had 
come at last. Brant stood by as their helper 
to the very end, but it availed them little. The 



STATESMAN OF THE TRIBES 125 

Black Snake, as they called General Wayne, 
had beaten them, and they knew he would 
beat them again. The tribesmen who had 
come from the far west withdrew sullenly 
across the Mississippi, the other races sub- 
mitted, and the Treaty of Greenville was 
signed with General Wayne on August 3, 1795. 
The ox-cart began to rumble north of the Ohio ; 
the tall forests fell before the settler's ax, and 
the red man lived and walked no more alone 
by the * River Beautiful.' 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE CHURCH BELL RINGS 

Joseph Brant had been a valiant warrior; he 
had dealt with the affairs of the Six Nations 
wisely and well. But he had never forgotten 
that one of the first duties of any ruler is to be, 
in some sense, a priest unto his people. From 
a lad, he seems to have been a devoted 
Christian. The alarms of war had drawn his 
mind for a period, it is true, to worldly con- 
siderations alone, but now that strife had 
ceased he became once more the friend of 
the missionary and sought to supply the 
spiritual needs of the tribes over which his 
influence was felt. 

Like every Indian, the wonderful things 
which Brant saw all about him in nature held 
his mind in a spell. To him there was One 
who had created all things, and who was ever 
ready and willing to sustain His children. On 
one occasion in council Brant spoke of the 
primitive freedom of the Indian people, and 

126 



THE CHURCH BELL RINGS 127 

then exclaimed : * This country was given to 
us by the Great Spirit above ; v^e wish to enjoy 
it.' He went on to tell how the Indians had 
tried to get peace, how their efforts had 
failed, and how their patience was now all 
gone. Yet there was one covert in which they 
might find shelter in time of storm. * We 
therefore throw ourselves,' was his final utter- 
ance, * under the protection of the Great Spirit 
above, who, we hope, will order all things for 
the best/ 

While Brant was on his second visit to 
England, the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts asked his help in getting 
out their printed books for the Indians. He 
willingly assented, and soon had a new edition 
of the Prayer and Psalm Book in preparation. 
He translated also the Gospel of St Mark. The 
Prayer and Psalm Book and his translation 
of the Gospel of St Mark were issued as one 
book. The publication of this volume must 
have brought a feeling of pride to the breast of 
the Mohawk chief. The book was a work of 
art, well printed and with some fine engravings. 
The frontispiece depicted the inside of a chapel, 
in which the king and queen were standing 
with a bishop on each side of them. The 
monarch and his consort were handing sacred 



128 THE WAR CHIEF 

books to the Indians, who were clustered about 
in an expectant attitude. 

A few years later Brant translated into the 
Mohawk tongue the Liturgy of the Anglican 
Church as well as a doctrinal primer. Copies 
of these were sent to Harvard University, and 
its corporation replied with a cordial vote of 
thanks to the War Chief for his gift. Brant 
also planned to write a comprehensive history 
of the Six Nations, but unfortunately this work 
seems never to have been commenced. 

Hardly had the Mohawks settled at Grand 
River when they began to feel that they 
should have a church building in which to 
worship. Funds were gathered, and as early 
as 1785 they were laying the foundations of 
a suitable edifice. This building, which was 
reared in the depths of the forest about two 
miles from the centre of what is now the 
city of Brantford, generally went by the name 
of 'The Old Mohawk Church.' In 1904, on a 
petition to the king, it was given the title of 
* His Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks.' Thus 
was restored the name of the church in which 
the Indians were wont to worship in the 
Mohawk valley. With its square tower, quaint 
slender steeple, and the graves of bygone 
generations of red men who have worshipped 




THE OLD MOHAWK CHIKCH. OK'.\M» KIVI' 1> 
Photograph by I'ark 



THE CHURCH BELL RINGS 129 

in it gathered about its walls, it is a venerable 
reminder of the past. The Bible which was 
first used in ' The Old Mohawk Church ' was a 
gift from Queen Anne to the tribesmen in 
1 71 2 and was brought to Grand River from 
their former home on the Mohawk. The silver 
communion plate was part of a service which 
had also been presented to them by the same 
queen before they came to Canada. It was of 
burnished silver and bore the Royal Coat of 
Arms. The remaining pieces of this set were 
given to the Indians who settled in the Bay of 
Quinte district. In the year 1786 there was 
sent to the church a large and melodious bell. 
This was a presentation from the British 
government, and on it was stamped the arms 
of the reigning House of Hanover. 

In all the wide region later known as the 
province of Upper Canada, as yet no other 
Protestant sanctuary had opened its doors for 
the use of Christian believers. With the erec- 
tion of this temple of the Mohawks begins the 
history of the Protestant churches in one of the 
fairest sections of the Dominion of Canada. 
It was a sweet and solemn bell that pealed out 
its message when service was held on those 
Sabbaths in pioneer days. Into the solitudes 
it rang, wakening the stillness, echoing to 

i;ra. I 



130 THE WAR CHIEF 

hill-top, and throbbing down to distant valley. 
Up and along the river stole the gladsome 
strain, the first call to prayer ever heard in this 
scarcely broken wilderness. From among the 
trees emerged the exiled people of the Long 
House. They mingled together ; they entered 
the courts of the Great Spirit, silent and full of 
awe. There they listened to the Gospel story 
and burst forth into many happy songs of 
thanksgiving and of love. 

Brant was very desirous of securing a 
missionary who would suit the tastes of all. 
He tried to get a resident missionary in the 
person of his friend Davenport Phelps, but the 
bishop of Quebec refused Phelps ordination ; 
and it was not until 1822, when the New 
England Company took over the missionary 
work on the Mohawk reserve, that the 
Indians of Grand River had a resident pastor. 
Brant also had won from General Haldimand 
a promise that a school should be built for the 
education of the Indian children, and that a 
flour-mill should be erected for the grinding 
of corn. 

Brant was deeply interested also in the native 
amusements of the people of the Long House. 
He seems to have retained a boyish heart 
in the later years of his life, and he saw with 



THE CHURCH BELL RINGS 131 

pleasure the sports and pastimes of the Indian 
youth. Hour after hour he would sit as an 
honoured spectator watching them play a 
hard-fought game of lacrosse that required 
fleetness of foot and straightness of limb. An 
eye-witness who sat with Brant at one of these 
games has told of the excitement which the 
match aroused. On this occasion a great 
company of Senecas had come all the way 
from New York state in order to compete for 
the mastery with their kinsmen, the Mohawks. 
The contest lasted for three days before the 
Senecas finally won the valuable stakes which 
were offered as the prize. 

The field which was cleared for the game was 
fairly extensive, the goals being placed about 
five hundred feet apart. The teams had sixty 
men a side. When any one dropped out from, 
either party another was supposed to take his 
place, and so the energies of the contestants did 
not flag. The netted rackets employed in the 
game of lacrosse were three and a half feet in 
length, straight at the handle but curved at 
the other end. The broad portion used for 
throwing or carrying the ball was formed of 
thongs of deerskin, interwoven and drawn firm 
and tight. It was a picturesque sight when the 
opposing teams were ready to commence play. 



132 THE WAR CHIEF 

The animated warriors were nude except for a 
breech-cloth reaching to the knee. When all 
was in readiness, an Indian maiden came 
tripping into the centre of the field. She was 
prettily attired after the custom of her tribe, 
wore bracelets of silver and a red tiara decked 
with eagle feathers. Placing the ball among 
the players, she hurried from the field of play. 
Two experts from the rival parties then raised 
the ball between their rackets and strove to 
make the first successful throw. The great 
game had now begun, and each time the ball 
went through a goal it counted one tally. The 
score-keepers, who were chosen from the older 
sachems of the tribes, were invested with 
peculiar powers. If one team was making 
far less tallies than its opponent, they could 
diminish its rival's score (without the players' 
knowledge, however) in order that the contest 
might be protracted. Games of this vigorous 
kind have made the athletes of the Six Nations 
noted in both Canada and the United States 
down to the present day. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE PINE-TREE TOTTERS 

It came to pass before long that the Indians 
wished to dispose of some of the land 
granted to them on Grand River. The United 
Empire Loyalists and others, lured by the 
prospect of cheap land, kept crossing into 
Canada from the United States ; accessions 
to the population of the Great Lakes region 
had come by immigration from the British 
Isles, and the country was making forward 
strides. Straggling settlers and speculators 
were often anxious to purchase land in the 
richer districts when they could get it at a low 
price. It happened, however, that after the 
redskins had sold and leased bits of their 
territory to such persons, the provincial govern- 
ment began to interfere. The land, it said, 
belonged to the Indians only so long as they 
remained upon it. They could not, therefore, 
sell any of it, as they had no direct ownership 
of the soil. 

13t 



134 THE WAR CHIEF 

This decision shed a new light upon the 
proprietary rights of the Six Nations in Canada 
and the Indians were sorely perplexed. All 
along they thought that they held their lands 
like other settlers who had proved their 
loyalty. Brant vigorously took up their case, 
made several able speeches on their behalf, 
and freely corresponded with the authorities 
of the province regarding the matter. In 
1793 Governor Simcoe issued a new proclama- 
tion respecting the grant, but this did not 
end the dispute. The province still claimed 
the right of pre-emption with respect to the 
whole of their reserve. Later on the matter 
was carried to England, and the British govern- 
ment tended to favour the Indians* claims. 
But nothing was done, owing to contentions 
among the redskins themselves. It was only, 
indeed, after Brant's death that the affair was 
finally settled. The sale of large tracts of 
Indian land was then authorized, and the money 
received was safely invested for the benefit 
of the Mohawks and others of the Six Nations 
in Canada. In connection with this difficult 
question Brant had intended making a trip 
to England, but was forced to abandon the 
idea. 

During the latter part of his life Brant 



THE PINE-TREE TOTTERS 135 

visited different parts of America and twice 
journeyed as far as the Atlantic seaboard. On 
these occasions he had the opportunity of 
talking over old campaigns with officers who 
had fought against him in the war, and he 
delighted his listeners with stirring stories of 
his experiences in the field. On one occasion, 
when in Philadelphia, he was entertained in 
sumptuous fashion by Colonel Aaron Burr. 
A dinner party was held in his honour, and 
among the guests were Talleyrand and Volney. 
Early in the evening the War Chief was rather 
taciturn, and the other guests were somewhat 
disappointed. But this was only a passing 
mood, from which Brant soon freed himself. 
Launching into the conversation, he was soon 
the centre of attraction. 

Though Captain Brant was able to pass his 
later years in comparative ease, his life was 
marred by the occurrence of two untoward 
events. His eldest son, Isaac, was a reprobate 
over whom the father exercised little influence. 
Isaac had been guilty of acts of violence and 
had begun to threaten Joseph Brant himself. 
He was jealous of the numerous children of 
Catherine Brant and took occasion to offer 
her various insults. In 1795 both father and 
son were at Burlington Heights, at a time when 



136 THE WAR CHIEF 

the Indians were receiving supplies from the 
provincial government. Isaac, crazed with 
liquor, tried to assault his father in one of the 
lower rooms of an inn, but he was held in 
check by several of his youthful companions. 

Captain Brant drew a dirk which he usually 
carried with him, and in the excitement of the 
moment inflicted a slight wound on Isaac's 
hand. The cut was not serious, but Isaac 
would not allow it to be properly treated, and 
subsequently died from an attack of brain 
fever. The War Chief was sorely grieved at 
the result of his hasty action, and fretted about 
it until the end of his days. He is said to have 
hung the dirk up in his room and to have often 
wept as he gazed upon it. The other source of 
trouble to Brant was the revolt against his rule 
of a small minority among the tribes. This 
movement was led by Brant's old adversary, 
Red Jacket, and another chief, the Farmer's 
Brother. A council was held by the dissenters 
at Buffalo Creek in 1803, ^.nd Joseph Brant 
was formally deposed as head of the con- 
federacy of the Six Nations. But as this 
meeting had not been legally convoked, its 
decisions were of no validity among the 
Nations. The following year, at another 
council, legitimately assembled, the tribesmen 



THE PINE-TREE TOTTERS 137 

openly declared their confidence in the War 
Chief's rule. 

Because of Brant's many services to the 
crown, the British government gave him a fine 
stretch of land on the north-v^est shore of Lake 
Ontario, near the entrance to Burlington Bay. 
On his estate, known as Wellington Square, 
he erected a large two-storey house, in which 
he might spend the remaining years of his life. 
A number of black slaves whom he had cap- 
tured in the war v/ere his servants and gave 
him every attention. Brant is said to have 
subjected these negroes to a rigid discipline 
and to have been more or less of a taskmaster 
in his treatment of them. In his declining 
years he was wont to gaze over the waters 
of Lake Ontario, remembering the country 
stretching from the southern shore where 
once he had struggled, and the valley of 
the Mohawk, where had been the lodges of 
his people. 

But the giant pine-tree of the forest was now 
beginning to bend. Tall and erect, it had out- 
topped and outrivalled every other tree of 
the woodland. Men knew that that pine-tree 
was tottering. In the autumn of 1807 the 
Captain of the Six Nations was in the grip of a 
serious illness. Friends and neighbours came 



138 THE WAR CHIEF 

to bring solace and comfort, for he was widely 
revered. Racked with pain, but uncomplain- 
ing, he passed the few weary hours of life which 
were left. On November 24, 1807, the long 
trail came to an end. Close by Brant's bedside, 
John Norton,^ a chieftain of his tribe, leaned 
to catch the last faltering word. 

* Have pity on the poor Indians,* whispered 
the dying War Chief ; ^ if you can get any 
influence with the great, endeavour to do them 
all the good you can.' 

The body of Captain Brant was taken to 
Grand River and buried beside the walls of the 
church he had helped to rear. In the centre of 
the busy city of Brantford — whose name, as well 
as that of the county, commemorates his — 
stands a beautiful monument, picturesque and 
massive, to his worth and valour ; in the hearts 
of the people of Canada he is enshrined as a loyal 
subject, a man of noble action, and a daunt- 
less hero. Seldom in the annals of Canada 
do we find a character so many-sided as the 
Captain of the Mohawks. He was a child of 
nature, and she endowed him with many gifts — 

* Norton was a Scotsman who, coming to Canada early in 
life, settled among the Mohawks and won a chief's rank among 
them. He played an important part in the War of 1812. 



THE PINE-TREE TOTTERS 139 

a stout and hardy frame, a deportment pleasing 
and attractive, and an eloquent tongue. It was 
these natural endowments that gave him endur- 
ance in the conflict, pre-eminence in council, 
and that won for him the admiration of his 
contemporaries. 

The education which Brant received was 
meagre, but he could hardly have put what 
knowledge he had to better advantage. After 
he had been relieved from the arduous life of 
the camp, he began to satisfy again his desires 
for self-culture. His correspondence towards 
the close of his life shows a marked improve- 
ment in style over that of his earlier years. 
There is no lack of convincing evidence that 
Brant had a penetrating and well-balanced 
intellect ; but his chief glory is the constant 
efforts he put forth for the moral and religious 
uplift of his people. 

With respect to Brant's abilities as a military 
leader, there will continue to exist differences 
of opinion. That he possessed the craftiness 
of his race in a superlative degree, and that he 
used this to baffle his opponents on the field 
of battle, cannot be denied. Some will go 
further and assert that he had a remarkable 
genius in the art of stratagem. Whatever 
powers he had he used, from his boyhood days, 



140 THE WAR CHIEF 

in the interests of British rule in America, and 
the services rendered by this last great leader 
of the Six Nations in the War of the Revolution 
were not among the least of the influences 
that enabled Great Britain to maintain a foot- 
hold on the North American continent. Joseph 
Brant in the War of the Revolution and his 
descendants in the War of 1 812 played essential 
parts in firmly basing British institutions and 
British rule in Canada. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The principal authority for material on Joseph 
Brant is William L. Stone's Life of Joseph Brant 
(Thayendanegea), 2 vols. (1838). This includes an 
account of the border wars of the American Re- 
volution and sketches of the Indian campaigns 
of Generals Harmar, St Clair, and Wayne. A 
brief biography entitled Memoir of Captain Joseph 
Brantf * compiled from authentic records,' was 
published anonymously in Brantford in 1872. 
History of Brant County (1883), Part II, pages 
85-149, is devoted almost exclusively to Brant and 
his family. Samuel G. Drake's Biography and 
History of the Indians of North America from its 
First Discovery has one chapter (pp. 577-93) given 
exclusively to Brant. The chapter in the same 
work dealing with Red Jacket will also be found 
of interest to the student of Brant's career. 
William L. Stone, Jr.'s Life and Times ofSirWiiiiam 
Johnson J 2 vols. (1865), contains much valuable 
information regarding the events which shaped 
the early career of Brant. B. B. Thatcher in his 
Indian Biography^ 2 vols., dismisses Brant with 
an unsympathetic and prejudiced paragraph, but 
several of his chapters, particularly the one 



142 THE WAR CHIEF 

dealing with Red Jacket, throw much light on 
the struggles in which Brant took part. 

Other works which contain much material 
relating to Joseph Brant are Mrs Holden's The 
Brant Family \ Eleazar Wheelock's Narrative of 
the Original Design , Rise, Progress and Present 
State of the Indian Charity-School at Lebanon, 
in Connecticut (1763) ; William V. Moore's Indian 
Wars of the United States; Jean N. M'llwraith's 
Sir Frederick tialdimand, and A. G. Bradley's 
Lord Dorchester in the * Makers of Canada ' series ; 
Lewis H. Morgan's League of the Ho-d^-no-sau-nee, 
or Iroquois ; E. M. Chadwick's The People of the 
Long House; Documents relating to the Constitu- 
tional History of Canada, 1759-1 791 ^ selected and 
edited by Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty; 
Haldimand Papers, January 1779 to March 1783, 
copies of which are in the Dominion Archives; 
Handbook of Canadian Indians, edited by James 
White, F.R.G.S. 

See also in this Series : The Dawn of Canadian 
History; The Invasion of 1775; The War Chief 
of the Ottawas ; Tecumseh, 



INDEX 



Alden, Colonel Ichabod, in 

command of fort at Cherry 

Valley, 78. 
American Revolution, the 

Indians and the, 29 ; end of, 

99-100. 
Anne, Queen, her gifts to the 

Mohawks, 129. 
Arnold, General, defeated by 

Carleton, 45 ; his ruse at Fort 

Stanwix, 62. 

Boswell, James, and Joseph 
Brant, 6 note, 43. 

Bouquet, Colonel, British com- 
mander at Bushy Run, 25. 

Brant, Catherine, third wife of 
Joseph Brant, 97, 135. 

Brant, Isaac, dies from wound 
inflicted by his father, 135-6. 

Brant, John, and the reference 
to his father in 'Gertrude 
of Wyoming-,* 71, 97. 

Brant, Joseph, his birth and 
parentag-e, 1-8 ; at Lake 
George, 13, 15-16 ; in fight at 
Fort Niagara, 19 ; sent by 
Sir William Johnson to 
Dr Wheelock's school in 
Connecticut, 20-4 ; as an in- 
terpreter, 23-4 ; m Pontiac's 
War, 25 ; weds daughter of 
an Oneida chief, 26; Sir 



William Johnson's confi- 
dence in, 26 ; assists in Bibli- 
cal translations, 2C-7, 127-8 ; 
made secretary to Colonel 
Guy Johnson, 30 ; a ' Pine- 
tree Chief,' 31 ; assumes the 
leadership of the Iroquois in 
war, 32 ; his appeal to the 
Oneidas to remain loyal in 
American Revolution, 34 ; 
with Colonel Guy Johnson 
secures the Iroquois for the 
British, 36-7 ; leading spokes- 
man in interview with Sir 
Guy Carleton, 39 ; given a 
captain's commission, 39 ; re- 
ceived by George III in Lon- 
don, 41-2; meets James Bos- 
well, 6 note, 43 ; his portrait 
by George Romney, 43-4 ; at 
Oquaga, 46, 65 ; General 
Herkimer sent to negotiate 
peace with him, 49-51 ; Her- 
kimer's treachery, 52-3 ; 
with Colonel St Lcger at 
Fort Stanwix, 55-62 ; inflicts 
heavy blow on Americans 
at Oriskany, 57-61 ; with 
Burgoyne, 63; his kindness 
of heart at Springfield and 
Schoharie, 65-7, 98-9 ; and at 
Cherry Valley, 79-81, 83 ; his 
answer to charge of barbarity, 

143 



144 



THE WAR CHIEF 



67-8 ; a reward offered for 
knowledge of his movements, 
68-9 ; at Andrustown at time 
of massacre at Wyoming- 
valley, 70-1 ; raids Mohawk 
valley, 72-4 ; accepts chal- 
leng-e at Cherry Valley, 75-83 ; 
burns Minisink, 86-7 ; defeats 
Americans at the Delaware, 
87-9 ; defeated at the Che- 
mung, a comparison with 
Tecumseh, 90-4 ; frustrates 
Red Jacket's plot, 95-6 ; his 
second and third wives, 96-7 ; 
obtains land in Canada for 
Six Nations, 102-5 ; negoti- 
ates with Colonel Munroe on 
question of hostages, 107-8 ; 
his ambitious designs, 84-5, 
108, 115-16; a sketch of his 
appearance, 109 ; his recep- 
tion in London, 109-10 ; 
causes stampede at a masked 
ball, 111-13; appeals to Lord 
Sydney on behalf of the Indi- 
ans, 113-14; as the statesman 
of the Indians, 1 15-18 ; assists 
in defeating General St Clair, 
119-20 ; refuses United States 
bribe, 121-2 ; receives Gover- 
nor Simcoe at Grand River, 
123-4 ; his efforts on behalf of 
the Church, 126-30 ; his inter- 
est in Indian sports, 130-2 ; on 
right of Indians to sell land, 
134 ; his meeting Aaron Burr, 
Talleyrand, and Volney, 135 ; 
family and tribal troubles, 136- 
37; last days and death, 137-8. 

Brant, Molly, and Sir William 
Johnson, 7-8. 

Brantford, the Mohawk church 
at, 128; Brant's monument 
in, 138. 



Burgoyne, General, his plan of 
campaign, 54. 

Burr, Colonel Aaron, enter- 
tains Brant, 135. 

Bushy Run, battle of, 25-6. 

Butler, Colonel John, in com- 
mand at the Wyoming valley 
massacre, 70-1. 

Butler, Captain Walter N., 
persuades Brant to join him 
m a raid of vengeance, 75-7 ; 
at Cherry Valley, 77-80. 

Butler's Rangers, 55 ; at Oris- 
kany, 58 ; at Cherry Valley, 
76-80. 

Canajoharie Castle, the home 
of Brant's parents, 5, 21. 

Carleton, Sir Guy, and the 
Iroquois, 38 ; his appeal, 39 ; 
defeats General Arnold, 45 ; 
assures the Indians as to the 
future, 100. 

Chemung river, battle of, 90-2. 

Cherry Valley, raid of, 75-83. 

Clarke, Colonel George, de- 
feats Governor Hamilton, 
84-5 ; defeated by Brant, 99. 

Clinton, General James, and 
the United States campaign 
of vengeance, 86 ; with 
General Sullivan at Chemung 
river, 90-2. 

Cornplanter, on General Sulli- 
van, 93 ; and treaty with 
United States, 107. 

Cornwallis, Lord, surrenders 
at Yorktown, 99. 

Declaration of Independence, 
the, 45. 

Delaware river, battle at, 87-9. 

Dieskau, Baron, at Lake 
George, 13-15 ; his experi- 
ence when lying wounded 



INDEX 



145 



in Sir William Johnson's 
tent, 17. 

Fort Detroit, fight at in 

Pontiac's War, 25. 
Fort Stanwix, holds out 

against St Leger, 55-62 ; 

treaty of, 115. 
Fowler, David, an Indian, and 

his mission, 21. 
Fox, Charles James, and 

Brant, no. 

Gage, General, governor of 
Massachusetts, 29 ; his secret 
orders regarding the Indians, 
36. 

Genesee valley, heavy punish- 
ment of Indians at, 93. 

George III and Brant, 42, no, 
114. 

George IV and Brant, no. 

George, Lake, 13 ; battle at, 
14-17. 

Gladwyn, Major, defends Fort 
Detroit, 25. 

Greenville, Treaty of, between 
United States and Indians, 
125. 

Haldimand, General, his pro- 
mises to the Indians, loo-i, 
130 ; grants land to Six 
Nations, 102, 103. 

Hamilton, Governor, surren- 
ders at Fort Vincennes, 84-5. 

Harmar, General, defeated by 
Indians, 117. 

Harvard University thanks 
Brant, 128. 

Herkimer, General Nicholas, 
negotiates with Brant, 49-51 ; 
his treachery, 52-3 ; his cour- 
age at Oriskany, 57-61 

Indians, at Wyoming valley 



massacre, 70-1 ; displeased 
with treaty with United 
States, 115; their revolt of 
1790 against United States, 
117; submit to the inevitable, 
124-5. See under names of 
chiefs and tribes. 
Iroquois, the. See Six Nations. 

Johnson, Colonel Guy, his 
task to keep the Six Nations 
loyal, 30; his mission with 
Brant, 36. 

Johnson, Sir John, 30 ; organ- 
izes settlersand Highlanders, 
33-4 ; with Brant at Chemung 
river, 90. 

Johnson, Sir William, Indian 
superintendent, 5 ; and Molly 
Brant, 7-8 ; his influence with 
and understanding of the 
Indians, 9 ; chosen by Thir- 
teen Colonies to lead attack 
against the French, 10; 
invites Indians to assist him, 
1 1 ; wounded at Lake George, 
17 ; made a baronet, 17 ; his 
success at Fort Niagara, 
18-19 ; sends Joseph Brant 
to Moor's Indian Charity 
School, 21-2 ; on his death- 
bed appeals to the Six 
Nations to remain loyal, 30. 

King Hendrick, a Mohawk 
chief, with Sir William John- 
son at Lake George, 13, 14 ; 
slain, 15. 

Little Abraham, a Mohawk 
chief, and Sir William John- 
son, 12 ; desires to remain 
neutral in American Revolu- 
tion, 32. 



K 



146 



THE WAR CHIEF 



Little Turtle, a Miami chief, 

and Brant, 119. 
Logan, 'Mingo Chief of the 

Shawnees, Indians rally 

under, 33. 
Lyman, General Phineas, with 

Sir William Johnson at Lake 

George, 13. 

M'Kean, Captain, and Brant, 
66 ; his challenge and boast, 
68-9, 82. 

Miamis revolt against United 
States, 117, 1 19-21. 

Minisink, burned by Brant, 
86-7. 

Mohawks, the mightiest of the 
Six Nations, 3 ; position of 
settlements of, 4-5 ; clans of, 
6 note ; succour Major Glad- 
wyn in Pontiac's War, 25 ; 
not at Wyoming valley raid, 
71 ; their position at end of 
American War, loi ; journey 
to new home in Canada, 
104-5 J assist the Miamis, 
119 ; build the first Protestant 
church in Upper Canada, 
128-30 ; against Senecas at 
lacrosse, 131-2. 

Mohawk valley, raided by 
Brant, 72-4. 

Montgomery, General, cap- 
tures Fort St John and 
Montreal, 40. 

Montreal, Brant with Iroquois 
at, 38-9 ; Allen's attempt to 
capture, 39 ; in 1775, 40-1 ; 
capitulates to Montgomery, 
40. 

Northumberland, Duke of, the 
• Evergreen Brake,' no ; 
sends present to Brant, 123. 

Norton, John, a Scotsman and 



a Mohawk chief, 138 and 

note. 
Ohio valley, Indian strife for 

possession of, 2-3. 
Oneidas, Brant's appeal to the, 

34 ; desire to remain neutral, 

35 ; Brant helps to destroy 

villages of, 97. 
Oriskany, ambuscade at, 57-61. 

Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, 
leads revolt against the 
British, 24-5 ; sues for peace, 
26. 

Potawatomies revolt against 
United States, 117. 

Prideaux, Brigadier, killed at 
Fort Niagara, 18. 

Red Jacket, a Seneca, sug- 
gests that Six Nations 
should join the Americans, 
95 ; objects to submission to 
United States, 106-7 J tries 
to undermine Brant's influ- 
ence, 136. 

Riedesel, Baroness, her de- 
scription of Brant, 109. 

St Clair, General, on the 
Indian confederacy, 116-17; 
defeated by Brant, 1 18-21. 

St Leger, Colonel, 54-5 ; fails 
in siege of Fort Stanwix, 
55-62; defeats Americans at 
Oriskany, 58-61. 

Senecas, with Butler at Wyom- 
ing valley massacre, 71 ; at 
Cherry Valley, 79-81 ; offer 
land to the Mohawks, loi ; 
against Mohawks at la- 
crosse, 131-2. 

Shawnees, defeated by the 
Virginians, 32-3 ; revolt 
against United States, 117. 



fi D - 83 * 



INDEX 



«47 



Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor, 
visits Brant at Grand River, 
123-4 > and the sale of Indian 
lands, 134. 

Six Nations, tribes of the, 
2 note ; their ascendancy in 
the Ohio valley, 2-3 ; their 
embassy to London, 6 ; invited 
by Sir William Johnson to 
aid him against the French, 
II ; with the British in 
Pontiac's War, 25 ; majority 
remain loyal in American 
Revolution, 30 ; two reasons 
why, 32-3 ; avow their 
willing-ness to fight for the 
king, 36-7 ; at Fort Stanwix, 
56 ; at Oriskany ambuscade, 
58-61 ; barbarity of, 64-5 ; 
dispose of rights to Wyom- 
ing valley, 70; rout of at 
Chemung river, 90-2 ; a plot 
among to join Americans, 
95-6 ; by Treaty of Versailles 
lose their lands in United 
States, but land allotted to 
them in Canada, 100-5 J 
revolt against United States, 
117. 

Smith, Charles Jeffrey, his 
missionary tour with Brant, 

23-4. 

Stuart, Rev. John, and Brant, 
26-7. 

Sullivan, General, and the 
United States campaign of 
vengeance, 85-6 ; exacts 
retribution at Chemung 



river, 90-2; as the *Town 
Destroyer ' a terror to 
Indians, 93. 
Sydney, Lord, colonial secre- 
tary, and Brant, 1 13-14. 

Tecumseh compared with 

Brant, 94. 
Thayendanegea, meaning and 

pronunciation of, 1-2. See 

Brant, Joseph. 
Tice, Captain, with Brant to 

London, 41. 

United States and the French, 
10 ; their campaign of ven- 
geance on the Indians, 85-6 ; 
declare war against Indians, 
118 ; their offer to Brant, 
121-2. 

Waggoner, Joseph, discloses 
plot to kill Brant, 52. 

War Chief, the. See Brant, 
Joseph. 

Wayne, General, defeats and 
forces Indians to sign Treaty 
of Greenville, 124-5. 

Wheelock, Dr Eleazar, re- 
ceives Brant at his school, 
21 ; his impressions of Brant, 
22, 23 ; Brant's reminder 
when he tries to persuade 
Brant to join the Americans, 

42-3- 
Wisner, Gabriel, a magistrate 

killed by Brant, 89. 
Wyoming valley, the massacre 

at, 70-2. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 






^ "^ . 
V v" 



^' 















V 






.<^ c o " <» -♦ ^ i 






"^^^ 



















^o 






o V 






•y '^ '-X^lg^.' cV 




-5 






-•-\/ 








^0 \0 -7\ 


./ 


o- 


\. cV^ ■ ■ ■■ ■ ' •- 


.v» . ^ 




j>^' 






.^^^•\ 






^ <> 
















. ^^ ' 4 O^ 













A-^ 



,^^ 



? 



FEB197 



•t-^ ST. AUGUsW '^ ■ V>„ .«? 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




